Browsing by Subject "sustainable development"

In 1987, the United Nations concerned with global challenges to human development called for a new model of growth to be erected upon the notion of sustainable development. Today, twenty five years later, the world continues to be beset by these global challenges and a governance gap around this issue has become manifest. Overtime, the international community came to the realization that, first, tackling these challenges requires the collective action of a multiplicity of relevant actors. And second, that the private sector, with its resources, know-how, experience and jurisdiction, could have a pivotal role to play to this end. The problem with these assumptions was the scepticism generated by mainstream interpretations of corporate nature and rationality. Despite the potential for contribution, corporations as self-interested agents in the struggle for the maximization of individual advantage could not be expected to contribute to the promotion of sustainable development; let alone through collective action. And yet contemporary evidence shows, that this scepticism is unwarranted. For that reason, the main purpose of this descriptive study was to account for the existing cases of collective action, and identify by listening to corporate actors, what was the rationale that underpinned their decisions to engage in these forms of collective action. In doing so, the aim was to assess the current suitability of mainstream approaches to reflect reality. Because of that, special attention was devoted to the notion of corporate self-interest (the key concept used by mainstream approaches to nurture the egoistic interpretation of the corporate actor). In listening to corporate actors two related qualitative analyses were conducted. On the one hand, a set of archival material - corporate responsibility reports and codes of conduct - was approached through a story-line narrative technique the purpose of which was to set the contextual and notional framework for the content analysis of interview transcripts that was to follow. On the other hand, semi-structured elite interviews were conducted on corporate executives of four transnational corporations, all of which are leaders in their respective industries and have a record of collective action that contributes to sustainable development. These corporations were Novartis, UPM, Tetra-Pak and Nokia and the overall purpose of the analytical chapter has been learn from corporate actors themselves what drove them to engage in these forms of collective action. At first glance the results of the analyses revealed that the rationale behind corporate engagement, continued to be explained by reference to corporate self-interest; just as mainstream approaches suggested. However, the point of divergence between these two interpretations was to be found in the way corporate self-interest was defined. According to mainstream approaches, corporate self-interest was defined in terms of profit maximization. Conversely, the findings unveiled in this study highlight the necessity to separate interests (instrumental reasons) from corporate self-interest (teleological reasons). In line with that differentiation, self-interest is defined as long-term survival, and all other interests are interpreted as instrumental to it. These findings have encouraging implications on the relevance of mainstream approaches to represent. Insofar a reassessment of the notion of corporate self-interest is undertaken to account for teleological reasons as distinct from instrumental reasons, mainstream approaches would be able to provide a fairer account of contemporary circumstances than they do today. In the absence of such an update, not only do they run the risk of not being able to reflect reality and becoming irrelevant, but they would also run the risk of rendering themselves unsuitable to account for changes in behaviours and interests, ultimately, downplaying rather than strengthening the rationality of actors. All in all, if what unrevised mainstream standards provide us with is an account for corporate rational behaviour, then what this study contributes is the possibility of moving past scepticism and understanding the potential for corporate behaviour to be better than rational.

Objectives. Many studies, activities, processes, services, and even individual products in sustainability (sustainable development) aim at change either only explicitly or only implicitly. However, change often remains unnecessarily modest considering the severity of the problems. This tendency exists in the field of craft science, fashion and more broadly. The research assignment is to describe, analyse and interpret change for sustainability in the field of fashion. The research task is to analyse the philosophical concept meliorism’s potential to produce new insight to this central question of sustainability. The aim is to examine change and understand with meliorism those conditions in which highly challenging and complex information could still be received without paralysis and acted on in consistent and constructive manners. Methods. The chosen data Fashion Transparency Index is compiled by the world’s leading fashion and sustainability campaign: Fashion Revolution. The index is a comparative review on fashion brands’ transparency on sustainability issues from year 2020. The analysis was done in stages. First it was mainly data-driven content analysis where the phenomenon’s concrete manifestations were more prominent. Towards the end theory-driven analysis with the help of concept of meliorism was in focus. Results and conclusions. In Fashion Transparency Index change for sustainability in the field of fashion remains mostly as vague hope, transparency tool making and optimistic descriptions of the sustainability activities of big fashion brands. However, based on further results of this study, it can be tentatively claimed that if meliorism’s active take on making a difference, the preconditions for change for sustainability could be met. In other words if we are not to sink into hopeless pessimism nor give into unfounded optimism but we actively absorb inaccessible, incomplete and even anxiety provoking information and act in accordance to that information, we have an opportunity to improve the presence and above all the future of fashion field.

Growing exploitation of natural capital has raised a concern towards Earth’s capability to provide equal benefits for all in the future. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals addressed this issue and set the framework for private and public operators to implement and develop more sustainable solutions. Circular economy and bioeconomy have been presented as models to foster the economy along with sustainability transitions. However, the models have been criticized for taking overall sustainability for granted. As a result, the merged concept, circular bioeconomy, has been introduced to address such sustainability gap. The circular bioeconomy concept implies a more efficient resource management of bio-based renewable resources by combining the concept of circular economy and bioeconomy in strategic management level. These new concept demands both new technological innovations and new business model innovation. This study explores similar and dissimilar patterns in the way Finnish SME propose, create and deliver value through circular bioeconomy business models. The study examines the relation of new concept to sustainability as well. The study was based on qualitative research, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight company managers or owners. The data were categorized into business model components and sustainable business model archetypes. The results revealed that sustainability-oriented business model archetypes vary across the examined companies. Dominant ideas are substituting fossil-based materials and energy with bio-based one, and practices enabled by new technology such as production eco-efficiency. More radical principles were missing, for instance prolonging the material cycle before incineration or solutions to reduce consumer consumption. While environmental value was well covered in the business models of companies, contribution to social value was taken for granted as a narrow outcome of economic and environmental values. As this study concerned the micro level perspective, for further studies would be beneficial to examine the meso and macro level transformation to get a more holistic view on business environment, where companies with circular bio-product innovations operate to reveal implementation barriers for the circular bioeconomy.

This study focuses on citizen and interest group public engagement for deliberating on societal challenges, especially in an academic research planning context. The studied participatory event is the first Future Earth Townhall Meeting organized in Helsinki in May 2015. Using an extended case method and a theory-driven approach combined with mixed methods, this study aims to shed light on social and theoretical aspects framing the studied participatory event. The extended case study method was selected to support and direct inquiry as well as to enable reconstructing existing theory. This study combines participant observation, textual content analysis, word frequency analysis and visual analysis. In the social sciences demands to better take into account environmental issues have increased after the Second World War. The study’s ethnographic grassroots perspective situates the studied event into a wider framework of participation and political sociology. Analysis is organized through main frames local publics and global challenges. Local publics especially addresses the following research questions: How were local publics constructed? What voiced concerns frame participation? Global challenges in turn focuses on: How were thematic aims developed and articulated? The key concept global change awareness guides analysis of interdisciplinary work. Four planning stages of idea development (cf. Lempiälä 2011) illustrate main front end stages connected to the key challenges and activities. In the studied case the process has moved from international to local level. For global challenges, ARGIL is introduced to highlight a difference between broader Adaptation and socially coordinated Resources. Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge’s (1972) concept new public sphere of production is used as theoretical backbone on participation. Because the event was advertised as open to anyone interested in addition to experts, the studied event’s meeting hall sessions can be seen as front stage activities (cf. Goffman 1956; Lempiälä 2011). Participatory activities taking place after general concept approval can limit participants’ critical potential. At the same time, international grand challenges are widely used in various contexts, and increased awareness can thus be beneficial for participants. The studied event is situated at an intersection of global and local networks of influence. Future Earth aims to combine a focus on various levels, cooperating with different stakeholders and actors. The studied event’s thematic focus touches upon the UN’s sustainable development goals and the EU’s grand societal challenges.

Kestävä kehitys on noussut ajankohtaiseksi aiheeksi eri yhteiskunnan aloilla. Myös hammaslääketieteen peruskoulutuksessa kestävä kehitys tulisi huomioida aiempaa kokonaisvaltaisemmin. Nykyaikainen terveydenhuolto ei ole pitkällä aikavälillä kestävää lisääntyvän kysynnän, kasvavien kustannusten ja suuren ympäristökuorman vuoksi. Hammashoidon saralla kestävän kehityksen ytimessä on korkealaatuisen suusairauksien ennaltaehkäisyyn keskittyvän hammashoidon tarjoaminen. Tässä tutkielmassa tutustutaan kestävään kehitykseen ja hammashoitoon liittyviin lainsäädöksiin, erilaisiin suosituksiin ja kansainvälisiin sopimuksiin. Lisäksi selvitetään kuinka kestävä kehitys huomioidaan hammaslääketieteen peruskoulutuksessa eri puolilla maailmaa, ja tutustutaan aiheesta julkaistuun kirjallisuuteen. Tutkielma on toteutettu kirjallisuuskatsauksena. Tutkimusaineisto on kerätty terveydenhuollon erilaisten organisaatioiden, oppilaitosten ja muiden asiaa käsittelevien tahojen julkisilta internetsivuilta sekä Pudmedin, Ovid Medlinen ja Scopuksen tietokannoista. Tulosten mukaan hammaslääketieteen peruskoulutusta tarjoavissa oppilaitoksissa opetetaan melko vähän ympäristökestävyyteen liittyviä asioita. Sekä kehittyvien että kehittyneiden valtioiden hammaslääketieteen opiskelijoiden osalta ilmeni puutteita tietotasoissa ja/tai toimintatavoissa liittyen ympäristökestävään hammashoitoon. Myös muun muassa puutteet vastuuntunnossa tai eettisessä sitoutumisessa sekä erilaiset rajoitteet voivat osaltaan vaikuttaa asiaan. Lisäkoulutuksen tarve näyttäisi olevan laajempaa kehittyvissä valtioissa. Kaikki Suomen hammaslääketieteen koulutusohjelmaa tarjoavat yliopistot ovat sitoutuneet kestävän kehityksen huomioimiseen opetuksessa. Kestävä kehitys olisi hyödyllistä sisällyttää pakollisena teemana hammaslääketieteen peruskoulutuksen opetussuunnitelmaan maailmanlaajuisesti. Aiheesta tarvitaan lisää tutkimuksia, jotka voisivat tarjota lisätietoa nykytilanteesta ja edistää mahdollisimman tehokkaiden opetusmenetelmien löytämistä ja integroimista osaksi opetussuunnitelmia. Tutkimuksessa saatuja tuloksia voidaan hyödyntää hammaslääketieteen peruskoulutuksen kehittämiseen. (200 sanaa)

Aims. The good life opportunities are tried to be secured by the sustainable development. Food production and consumption are essential elements in ecological development, which is one section of the sustainable development. Because the environmental impacts vary with different foodstuffs, a major influence can be reached by proper choice of consumer and eating habits. Good education in home economics can greatly influence the eating habits of children and youth. Teaching in home economics is bound by the curriculum, but in the end what is emphasised is chosen by the teacher. The aim of this study amongst teachers in home economics was to establish their level of understanding of the impact food has on the environment and how it has come true in the teaching. Methods. The study was carried out in a qualitative method. A thematic interview method was used in collecting data. Eight home economics teachers, who worked in secondary schools in Helsinki took part in individual interviews in January 2016. The interviews were recorded and the data was transcribed. A phenomenography method was applied in the analysis of the data and answers to the research questions were screened. Findings were interpreted and compared with the theoretical background. Results and discussion. Home economics teachers do not see the impact that food may have on the environment as an important issue in home economics. The teachers thought that teaching nutrition, cooking, and personal skills were of primary importance. Their ability to teach about the environmental impact of food varied. Most of the teachers felt being in need of better information on the topic. According to the teachers the theme was hardly discussed in their own education in home economics. Environmental impacts were hardly discussed in teaching. The role of food on the environment was according to the teachers noted mainly when discussing sorting of household waste. The topic was to some extent discussed only when the issue was questioned by students. The environmental aspect was hardly mentioned in the available textbooks. The teachers tend to give more emphasis in their teaching in economic and social development than in ecological sustainability. The environmental impact of food itself would be an important topic both for home economics teachers' education and updated training in home economics.

This thesis examines how urban sustainability is constructed in the local implementation plans of Sustainable Development Goals, and whether a common discourse can be outlined of them. Cities and other local authorities are increasingly assuming the global responsibility for sustainable development actions alongside the nation-states. In this case, the commitment is demonstrated by voluntarily committing to monitoring progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals as part of a global city network. The potential reasons for cities to engage in such global city networks for sustainability are a disappointment to global cooperation efforts by nation-states, a possibility for peer learning, sharing new practices, and seeking branding possibilities. A sample of local commitments, Voluntary Local Reviews, are analysed in terms of their discursive construction. The analysis is based on the theoretical constructions of environmental policy discourses by Maarten Hajer and John Dryzek. By focusing on policy discourses, it becomes possible to understand how certain issues are organized into politics while others are organized out. The research focuses on nine Voluntary Local Reviews released in 2019 by Bristol, Buenos Aires, Hamamatsu City, Helsinki, Los Angeles, Oaxaca, Mannheim, New York City and Taipei City. The research shows that although cities have internalized the common principles of sustainable development, mainly deriving from the Agenda 2030, many of them are interpreted in various ways. The common framework by Voluntary Local Review offers only a vague guideline for the reviews which leads to cities rather resorting to copying the models from each other or developing their own. The inherent ambiguity that is connected to the term sustainable development is not addressed in any of the reviews, nor is an explicit definition of the used sustainability concept offered in any of them. This supports the notion that cities engage in the discursive construction of (urban) sustainable development with the reviews. Based on the reviews, the following Sustainable Development Goals are considered as most relevant for cities: goal 11 (Sustainable cities and communities), goal 8 (Decent work and economic growth), goal 10 (Reduced inequalities) and goal 16 (Peace, justice and strong institutions). Cities also actively position themselves as global sustainability actors in their reviews. They position themselves as eager to bear a global responsibility and as most relevant actors for citizens, close to their everyday lives. Furthermore, they express an urge to inspire other cities nationally and globally to also join in reporting and commit to sharing their progress on global arenas, such as in the United Nation’s High-Level Political Forum. In their connection to national sustainable development reporting, broadly two approaches can be identified. In some situations, national reporting is not mentioned in a review at all and, consequently, its role is highlighted. This applies mostly in situations where national actors are not considered as active as city actors. In other situations, cities see their reporting as complementary to the national one and even consider cooperation as their duty thanks to shared values with national actors. Voluntary Local Review reporting offers an interesting case of voluntary bottom-up commitment by cities to engage in global sustainability spheres and its significance is likely to only increase in the future. Based on results, reporting on the local level requires a careful balancing between adapting goals and indicators to locally relevant form, on one hand, and ensuring that they are general enough to allow for comparison, on the other hand. As sustainable development and Sustainable Development Goals are characterized by ambiguity concerning their precise definitions, the current local reporting offers considerable judgement for cities in terms of what to include in the reporting. More precise frameworks and indicators would allow that also cities with lesser resources could engage in this sustainability reporting.

Households globally contribute 72 %, and in Finland about 70 % of greenhouse gas emissions, so they have a remarkable potential to mitigate climate change. Alongside technical solutions, human behavior patterns have been identified as a significant component of consumption, and changing them towards more environmentally friendly direction would increase our chances to combat climate change. These behaviors can be explored with social practice theory that sees people’s daily behavior as a part of a broader independent object, practice. As in many aspects households' everyday life consists of repetition of daily habits, social practice theory provides a suitable framework for assessing the changes made by households. This Master's Thesis will look into two household consumption sub-areas, mobility and the use of electrical appliances, in four Finnish sustainable consumption projects related to households. The material for the study was collected from written material as well as interviewing two experts from each project's personnel. The projects were living lab experiments in which 5 to 16 households tried to reduce their consumption of energy and natural resources by making more sustainable consumption choices and changing their habits. How do these projects seek to influence practices? What is the significance of the changes related to mobility and electric appliances for climate change mitigation in the home context? To assess this significance, a framework for evaluation, climate change mitigation potential, was developed. To be a decisive measure, a significant reduction in the carbon footprint as well as the ability to spread widely among households are essential. Thus, the climate change mitigation potential of a given measure was determined as the product of 1) impact, and 2) feasibility, which were estimated on a five-step scale. As a basis for the evaluation, both project material and more general analyses were used. 13 measures were identified, that aimed to influence the practices of using electrical appliances and of mobility, either by recrafting the elements of the practices, substituting old practices with new ones, changing how different practices interlock, or combining these approaches. The unanimous opinion of the interviewees was that personal counseling played a particularly important role in achieving the changes. The climate change mitigation potential was low in electrical appliance use and moderate in mobility changes. The result was not surprising, since the use of electrical appliances accounts for smaller part of households' greenhouse gas emissions than mobility. However, the climate change mitigation potential turned out to be a viable assessment framework that has value in future experiments and policy interventions, helping to focus on measures that have the greatest potential to reduce climate stress. Although, especially by changing the practices of mobility, households can achieve significant carbon dioxide savings, the balancing between realistic feasibility and good impact will result in the magnitude of less than 10 % of the households’ carbon footprint, including both mobility and electric appliance use. Taking other areas of consumption into account will improve this potential, but it is undeniable that households on their own will not be able to accomplish the almost 80 % reduction required for a sustainable level of consumption. Therefore, expectations of sustainable consumption cannot be left only to households and the changing of habits, but it is equally important to create a sustainable energy and infrastructure system, which will enable households to satisfy their remaining energy and mobility needs economically and fluently. In the end, the responsibility of this system falls on the decision makers, as only they have the necessary means to steer and sponsor companies, researchers and consumers to build together a carbon-free future.

Sustainable development is a large entity, that as a concept, is still ambiguous and unclear. Since the Brundtland report in 1987, sustainable development has slowly stared to increase its significance in day-to-day activities, where the ongoing UN’s international Agenda 2030 aims yet to increase the progress towards sustainable development across the globe. Sustainable development includes multidimensional economic, environmental and social aspects, where challenges facing sustainability within its dimensions are different in different regions. The ambiguity related to sustainable development lies in its complexity, where measuring progress demands clear and legible applications to ensure the accurate interpretation and communication of the measures. There are many ways to measure sustainable development, and as it is such an immense subject, the transparent procedure behind any sustainable assessment is underlined. This study is a local-level sustainable development performance analysis, that is conducted of all the Finnish local authorities. Sustainability performances are derived as sustainable development scores and ranking positions for each considered local authority via a dataset of 59 indicators. The indicators are aligned with the Agenda 2030 17 SDGs – the sustainability performance assessment is based on indicator data normalization, where normalized indicator data is aggregated to the appointed SDG, and furthermore as the overall sustainable development scores for each local authority. The sustainable development ranks are then derived from the score values as a data arrangement application. Being a data-based examination, data-related characteristics are invoked in this study by computing the sustainable development performance numbers of all the Finnish local authorities four times: once with the original dataset, and three times by applying weights to the data; considering indicator-specific data coverage by the share of population included, indicator-specific coverage by local authority data availability and lastly SDG-specific coverage by the number of indicators aligned. The results after all the four sustainability performance applications show that Kuopio scores the best of all the Finnish local authorities every time. On the contrary, Koski Tl gets the worst performance, also for all the four performance applications. Otherwise, there are movements in ranking positions and sustainable development scores comparing the weighting applications with the non-weighted outcomes. When reviewing the top 10 and bottom 5 local authorities, municipalities of Åland; Jomala, Lemland and Lumparland, for instance improve their performances significantly when applying the weights to indicator coverage by local authority data availability. What can be deduced from this analysis, is that this sustainability performance assessment application is one way of measuring local sustainable development. The outcome of this data-based analysis is dependent on the indicators in use, and the applied minimum-maximum normalization method used in the aggregation process. This study provides an example of a local-level sustainability performance application, that may be utilized and further continued, acknowledging all the variable components, causal relations and data-related challenges that inevitably are present in such assessments. Such aggregated sustainability indicators’ analyses are prone to challenges related to data, where the intent for the given application vary case-by-case and should therefore also be assessed regarding the intended use.

The objective of my thesis is to portray small investors' views on ethical investing. The study material consists of 427 writings collected from Internet's Finnish investment discussion web pages. The focus of the study is on small investors' perceptions and on the methods they use. I examine whether investors are willing to put time and effort to ensure ethical issues, and the challenges and obstacles they confront. Furthermore, I study investors' views on ethical investments profit making possibilities compared to ordinary investing. Small investors prefer stocks and funds, and thus I take a closer look at these types of investments. As a method, ethical investors prefer negative screening. Their motive to invest ethically is the good feeling they get. Small investors define ethical investing based on their own, individual values. By using qualitative research methods I discovered four themes that are important reasons to invest ethically. These themes are financial profits, the environment, supporting domestic production and responsibility to take care of other people. Only few investors are willing to sacrifice profits for ethics if needed. Some investors defined ethical investing as aiming for best financial profits possible, without taking other issues into consideration. Environment itself is considered as important, but also because ignoring environmental issues has a negative impact on profits. Investors prefer domestic companies' stocks and are worried that companies move production to foreign countries. In decision-making, investors consider future generations, especially their own offspring. Ethical investing is considered as challenging and time-taking. They also find that there is a lack of ethical investment products and it is difficult to find objective information. In addition to interest towards ethical investing, there were different attitudes that characterized the investors. Neutral investors concentrate on facts and they consider ethical issues if they have an impact on profits. Orthodox investors believe that ethics do not belong to investing. Unethical investors are experimental and they believe that unethical investments provide high returns.