In his keynote, prof. Loorbach will present the framework of sustainability transitions and transition governance. He will explain how researchers can use these approaches to actively engage in systemic change and help guide and accelerate sustainability transitions through experimental, reflexive and collaborative research. He will illustrate how to become a transformative researcher though examples from his work on transition in biodiversity, mobility and energy.
Derk Loorbach is director of DRIFT and Professor of Socio-economic Transitions at the Faculty of Social Science, both at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Derk is one of the founders of the transition management approach as new form of governance for sustainable development. He has over one hundred publications in this area and has been involved as an action researcher in numerous transition processes with government, business, civil society and science. He is a frequently invited keynote speaker in and outside Europe.
Due to force majeure circumstances, Associate Professor Erika Kraemer-Mbula will be giving her keynote speech virtually.
The global sustainability challenge calls for fundamental changes in the way we organise our social, economic and governance systems. Innovative solutions - new approaches, new instruments and new capabilities appear to be central to this process. However, potential solutions are often looked through the lens of what is happening at the ‘technology frontier’. As a result, innovative solutions from low-income contexts remain largely underestimated and often overlooked. This presentation will discuss innovation for transformative change in the context of emerging economies, with a focus on African countries. It will look at shifts that are starting to take place, such as developments in manufacturing modalities as well as the transformative potential of the informal economy.
Associate Professor Erika Kraemer-Mbula is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). She also holds a position as a Senior Lecturer and Research Fellow at the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation (IERI) at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT). In the core of her research are science and technology policy analysis, innovation systems and sustainable development. She has focused on the research of various routes to the expansion of creative competencies in Africa, including public policy, learning, and international cooperation in science, technology and innovation (STI). Initially trained as an economist, Kraemer-Mbula holds a Master’s in Science and Technology Policy by SPRU from the Science and Policy Research Unit (University of Sussex, UK). Her Doctorate in Development Studies is from the University of Oxford. In her academic and professional career, Kraemer-Mbula has adopted a cross-disciplinary approach to explore alternative development paths for African countries.
Due to force majeure circumstances, Ms. Tucker will be giving her keynote speech virtually.
As Founder and CEO of Vertigo Ventures (VV), Laura Tucker leads the strategy and growth of the company. Laura founded VV in 2009 and led the development of the company’s flagship product, VV-Impact Tracker, which is now used by leading international research institutions globally, to identify, measure and report the impact of their research. Laura regularly contributes to the global impact agenda though co-writing official impact papers and speaking at conferences worldwide. For example, previously, UK's HEFCE commissioned VV to publish a 'Collecting Impact Evidence' best practice guide, and in 2018, Laura has presented at the EARMA and NCURA conferences in Brussels and Washington respectively, as well as at Times Higher Education (THE) Summits around the world.
Eeva Berglund teaches and writes on issues to do with society and the environment, particularly on grassroots urbanism, environmental social movements and transformations in notions of expertise, whilst occasionally participating in and persistently trying to better understand activism. She has a doctorate in social anthropology and an MSc in urban planning, both from the UK. She is currently Adjunct professor of environmental policy, Department of Design at Aalto University. Publications worth mentioning are the book about Helsinki that she co-edited with her colleague Cindy Kohtala, Changing Helsinki? 11 Views on a City Unfolding (Nemokustannnus, Helsinki, 2015) and Dwelling in Political Landscapes: Contemporary Anthropological Perspectives, co-edited with Anu Lounela and Timo Kallinen, which is due to our soon from SKS, Helsinki.
Andreas Ciroth is founder and director of GreenDelta, a consulting and software company with focus on sustainability assessment and life cycle analyses. An environmental engineer by education, he finished his PhD (error calculation in LCA) in 2001 at the TU Berlin and is working since then in sustainability consulting. He is leading the openLCA project to create a free, open source sustainability assessment software.
Andreas is co-chair of the working group on meta-data descriptors in the Global network of Interoperable databases, and an international expert in LCA software and databases. In 2015, he supported UNEP in projects related to LCA database creation in Malaysia and Brazil, including training and capacity building. He was the first subject editor of the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, for the field uncertainties, nominated in 2004, still holds this position, and is member of the Editorial Board of the Journal.
Nina Elomaa is passionate about sustainability and believes in positive development in the role businesses has in tackling the sustainability challenges facing the globe. She has wide experience in different businesses, such as energy, sourcing and sustainability. Presently she is Sustainability Director of Fazer Group. Her area of responsibility covers Sustainability in Fazer Group, including the bakery, confectionery, food service, milling and café businesses. Nina Elomaa Sustainability Director Fazer Group Oy Karl Fazer Ab PO Box 44, FI 00101 Helsinki Office: Fazerintie 6 Mobile +358 45 354 8611 nina.elomaa@fazer.com www.fazergroup.com
MSc. Sophia Hagolani-Albov is a PhD candidate of the Doctoral Programme in Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (DENVI) in the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry at the University of Helsinki. She is also a member of the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS). Her dissertation explores the socio-cultural dimensions of locality as it relates to food system redesign and sustainability transformation in the Finnish countryside. Her research interests include producer/consumer relationships, short supply chains, agroecological urbanism, and intellectual extractivism.
Teemu Harrinkari is a doctoral student in Sustainable use of Renewable Natural Resources (AGFOREE) program at the University of Helsinki. He holds a master's degree in forest economics (University of Helsinki) and has studied finance at the Aalto University School of Business.
His doctoral dissertation deals with the diffusion of international influences on national level, using Finland as a case study. His current research interests include the international and European forest policy domains, Finnish forest policy subsystem and the development of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and the Four pathways of international influences.
Pasi Heikkurinen (D.Sc., Econ. & Bus. Adm.) is Lecturer in Management at the University of Helsinki, Department of Economics and Management; Adjunct Professor in Sustainability and Organizations at the Aalto University School of Business, Department of Management Studies; and Visiting Researcher at the University of Leeds, Sustainability Research Institute. He is the editor of Sustainability and Peaceful Coexistence (2017, Routledge) and co-editor of Strongly Sustainable Societies: Organising Human Activities on a Hot and Full Earth (2019, Routledge). His research project is a phenomenology of sustainability, where the focus is on questions concerning ethics and technology in relation to sustainable change, and in particular in the context of food economy and agriculture.
Aleksi Heiskanen is International Development Expert at WWF Finland. Aleksi is working on WWF projects in East Africa and South-East Asia. He takes a special interest in ways to combine commercial forest management with biodiversity and local income generation.
Anna Johansson is graduating from the University of Helsinki, her main subject being Environmental Change and Policy. Her master’s thesis deals with light pollution in South Karelia, Finland. During her studies she has worked for South Karelia Allergy and Environment Institute and for Imatra Region’s Environmental Office, concentrating on issues combining environmental protection and health. Since September 2018 she has been working for Metsäteho Oy as a project researcher in a project “Evidence-Based Forestry in Finland”, during which a basis for evidence-based decision-making is created by producing systematic reviews and maps about sustainability issues within forestry sector.
Professor Markku Kanninen has 30 years of research experience in tropical forestry and 20 years of experience on climate change adaptation and mitigation issues. He has been involved in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 1990. He is serving as a member of the UNFCCC Adaptation Fund Board since 2008. Prior to his current position as the Director of Viikki Tropical Resources Institute (VITRI), he was Director of the Environmental Services and Sustainable Use of Forests Program of CIFOR (2003-2010), Deputy Director General of CATIE (Costa Rica) (1996-2003), and earlier Director of The Finnish Research Program on Climate Change (1990-1995).
Niina Kotamäki (Ph.D.) is a researcher at the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE). Her expertise is in environmental statistics, especially modelling the aquatic ecosystem responses to human activities and climate change, and assessing uncertainties related to decision-making processes. Recently, her research has been focused on the adaptive monitoring and modelling approaches and the integration of science, policy and actions.
Associate Professor Markus Kröger has done research on global industrial forestry, tree plantation expansion, and the sustainability of forest policies since 200. His main field research sites have been South America, Finland and India, but he has also done global analyses. His 2010 World Politics doctoral dissertation focused on the politics of pulp investment and the role of social movements in influencing these in Brazil, and later research has studied the topic of tree plantation expansion from many viewpoints around the world. He has also studied mining, agriculture, and other natural resource politics. His current research projects study the political economies of deforestation (Academy research fellowship) and agroforestry transitions.
Mona Kurppa is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research, Faculty of Science, University of Helsinki. In her master thesis she studied the impact of urban planning solutions on the street-canyon ventilation by a city boulevard proposed to be built in the City Plan 2050 of Helsinki. This unique study attracted a lot of attention due to the rareness of applying highly detailed air quality modelling in urban planning and decision making. In her doctoral thesis she has continued this research by including air quality components for aerosol particles and gaseous pollutants to the model. These improvements enable to quantitatively study, for example, human exposure to air pollutants and the impact of vegetation on local air quality at a detailed level.
Annukka Lehikoinen holds a PhD in environmental sciences. Her background is in aquatic sciences and she has studied various environmental risks and sustainable management of the Baltic Sea. In her work she applies systems analytical AI methods, such as Bayesian networks, for integrating multi-disciplinary knowledge and answering to various risk and decision analytical questions. Currently she is also interested in the applicability of these methods to support and facilitate inter-disciplinary communication and knowledge co-production.
Arttu Malkamäki is completing his PhD degree in the Doctoral Programme in Sustainable Use of Renewable Natural Resources (AGFOREE) at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is also a member of the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS). He uses multiple methods and theories from social sciences, focusing on the framing and politics of human-environment interactions. This includes issues such as diverging interests, power asymmetries, and inequalities in resource access and decision-making, and ideas about how to balance or overcome them. His empirical studies have focused on tree plantation economies in Uruguay and South Africa.
Olli Malve (D.Sc., Civil and Env. Engineering) is Leading Research Scientists in Surface Water Center of Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Helsinki. He has 30 years’ experience in water resources research and management. He is also Environmental Expert Judge in Supreme Administrative Court of Finland, Helsinki (Finland).
Antti Marjokorpi is the Head of Forests, Plantations, and Land Use in Stora Enso’s Sustainability organization. Stora Enso is a leading provider of renewable solutions in packaging, biomaterials, wooden constructions and paper on global markets. In his role, he heads Stora Enso’s international network of forest and land use sustainability professionals.
Antti has over twenty years of international experience in forestry and corporate social responsibility. He has specialised in plantation forestry, collaborative forest management, biodiversity conservation and management, and carbon sinks to help developing and implementing sustainable forest and plantation management practices.
Antti possesses a Master of Science degree in Agriculture and Forestry from the University of Joensuu, Finland, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Biodiversity research from the University of Turku, Finland.
Professor of Practice (PoP) Pekka Nikander has over 30 years of research and enterpreneuring experience. Coming from a software and decentralised systems security background, his interests span a wide area from designing efficient hardware/software interfaces to the impact of new technologies to the society as a whole. He is first and foremost a generalist. His main research interest today fall to the cross section of post-keynesian economics and decentralised trust technologies, revolving around applying distributed ledger technology (DLT) to data markets and IoT. He has authored or co-authored over 100 refereed scientific articles, with over 8000 citations, and is the inventor or a co-inventor in some 20 priority patents.
Tiina Paloniitty (LL.D.) is a post-doctoral researcher at University of Helsinki / HELSUS. Dr Paloniitty’s thesis passed with distinction from University of Helsinki in 2018. Dr. Paloniitty has researched EU water and agricultural govenance and legal theory and methodology, all from the science and law perspective. Their most recent research is about modelled environmental knowledge in judicial review. Dr. Paloniitty has published widely, eg with Journal of Environmental Law, Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, and co-edited a special issue for European Energy and Environmental Law Review (4/2018).
Salla Rantala is a Senior researcher at the Environmental Policy Centre, Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE). Her major research interests include the governance of environmental data and knowledge, and the political and institutional dimensions of natural resource governance. She has also served in a number of expert assignments related to global and national processes towards sustainable development. Previously, she has worked extensively in research and development cooperation in the Global South with a focus on forest governance, climate change and rural livelihoods. She holds a PhD in Forest Sciences from the University of Helsinki, Finland.
Christopher Raymond is an interdisciplinary sustainability scientist with research interests in sense of place; the social valuation of ecosystem services; and the conservation of biodiversity. He leads the Social Values for Sustainability Research Group www.socialvaluesrg.com and is one of seminal writers in the mapping of place-based values for ecosystems and their services. He also is the Coordinating Lead Author of the IPBES Values Assessment, Chapter 2 (Concepts).
Anu Reinikainen (MSc) is a researcher at the Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE). One of her current works focuses on social impact assessment implementations as a part of sustainability assessment. She is also involved in projects regarding local green economy indicators and measuring sustainability in the bioeconomy context. She is interested in sustainability/responsibility issues in the bioeconomy context, especially development and utilization of the of the sustainability indicators.
Aino Rekola is an environmental social scientist and expert in environmental policy. She has been working as a researcher in the Finnish Environment Institute SYKE since 2015. Before this she has been working as an environmental policy expert in several ministries in Finland. Her main research interests focus epistemic governance of environmental knowledge as well as on environmental justice. In her research, she applies concepts and theorization developed at the interface of STS and political analysis. She has also been using action research method in studying epistemic justice and reflexive planning practices. She is writing her PhD about epistemic governance and environmental knowledge in land use planning.
Anna Repo investigates system dynamics in sustainability questions related to the role of forests in climate change mitigation, interlinkages between climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation, and nature-based climate solutions. Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher in Natural Resource Institute Finland. She holds a D.Sc (Tech.) in Systems analysis and Operations Research, and a MSc in Environmental Science.
MSc. Sanna-Riikka Saarela (female) is a Researcher at SYKE, leading the System Transformation Unit in SYKE’s Environmental Policy Centre. Her research focuses on multi-directional and dynamic knowledge exchange processes and practices in environmental governance, management and planning on different governance levels. Besides research she has been and is working in multidisciplinary teams that carry out policy evaluation and impact assessment for practical applications on local, regional and state level in Finland and in the EU. She is an experienced facilitator of interactive processes and stakeholder engagement as well as project management and communication.
Dr. Matti Salo is a researcher at the Natural Resources Institutute Finland (Luke). He is adjunct professor (docent) of biodiversity and natural resources governance (University of Turku). His research ranges from terrestrial to marine environments and from forests to aquaculture and game resources governance as well as interactive and spatial planning. In addition to his current work in Finland, Salo has worked on Latin American (mostly Amazonian) biodiversity and natural resources governance issues since the early 2000s.
Maria Sandberg is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Corporate Responsibility at Hanken School of Economics. Her dissertation analyses ways to reduce consumption levels in high-consuming societies in response to environmental degradation, addressing in particular normative conceptions of sustainability as well as negotiations of social norms. Her main research interest is sustainability transitions towards degrowth, sufficiency, and sustainable production-consumption systems.
Dr. Sini Savilaakso has ten years of experience working on environmental and social impacts of forest management as well as on forest governance, and how policy tools, specially certification, can contribute to sustainability transitions. As a senior researcher at Metsäteho Oy, she works with Finnish forestry companies to improve their management practices for environmental and social sustainability, both in Finland and globally through primary research and evidence synthesis. After joining Metsäteho, Sini started an Evidence Based Forestry in Finland initiative (www.npmetsa.fi/en) that conducts evidence syntheses on forestry related sustainability questions. Prior to joining Metsäteho, Sini worked for the Center for International Forestry Research (2010-2017) where she worked with the Forest Stewardship Council to develop certification for ecosystem services.
Sanja Šćepanović is a research scientist at Nokia Bell Labs Cambridge in the Social Dynamics Lab led by Daniele Quercia. She studies how to use large-scale datasets for the benefit of people and urban environments. In her research, she focused on online health discussions, homophily in social networks, human mobility, Web security, and the smart grid. She completed her PhD at Aalto Univ., Finland working in the Data Mining group led by Prof. Aristides Gionis. Her thesis co-advisors were Pan Hui and Jukka K. Nurminen. In parallel, she conducted a business and innovation degree at the EIT Digital Academy. During the PhD time, she visited CERN and TU Delft.
She is also an alumna of International Space Univ. Her industry experiences include a startup in Silicon Valley, and ICEYE – a startup in Finland building the world’s first microsatellite SAR radar constellation.
M.Sc.,M.Soc.Sc. Jaana Sorvali works at the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) as a Research Scientist. She is also a PhD candidate in the doctoral programme in Sustainable Use of Renewable Natural Resources (AGFOREE) in the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry at the University of Helsinki. The main focuses in her research are farmer views and social acceptability of climate change adaptation and mitigation actions. Her research approach is mixed-methods based and she explores her topics through social sciences and environmental psychology. Besides her PhD research, she is involved in many other climate change related research projects.
Bodo joined the Department of Economics & Management, University of Helsinki, in 2017 as Professor of Food Economics, is head of the research group Management & Organizations for Sustainable Food Systems, as well as Adjunct Professor at the University of Alberta, Department of Resource Economics & Environmental Sociology. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Reading, and previously has held faculty and visiting appointments at the University of California - Berkeley, University of Alberta, University College Cork, University of Southern Denmark, University of Kiel, and Beijing Normal University. His research and teaching interests focus on social sustainability in food systems, value networks and organizational innovations. His joint work has also been featured in The Economist.
Ms. Taivalmaa deals with global food security, agriculture and rural development issues as senior advisor in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. She has gained broad experience from field as well as policy-making while working at the UN organizations (FAO, WFP), a private consultant company and the World Bank. She is co-author of the first comprehensive book on global food security (Nälkä ja Yltäkylläisyys) in Finland. She holds a Master’s degree in Agriculture and Forestry from the University of Helsinki. She has also studied tropical agriculture in Universidad de Costa Rica and horticulture in the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
University lecturer in Social and Public Policy. Specialist in environmental policy research, especially energy policy, and the use of novel methodologies in social science, including social network analysis, machine learning, statistical modelling of text data, combinations of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Docent in Methodology of Social Sciences, University of Tampere.
Liisa Varumo (M.Pub.Adm) is a researcher at the Policy centre of the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE). Her current work focuses on public participation in EU biodiversity policy and increasing dialogue on environmental issues at the science-policy-society interfaces at local and international scales. She is also involved in projects analysing the institutional frameworks of forest innovations in Europe, with a special focus on the development of an ecological compensations scheme in Finland. Methods for co-creating sustainable policies that encourage action towards halting biodiversity loss are the overarching theme of Liisa’s research interests.
Markus Vinnari (DSc., Econ. & Bus. Adm.) is Lecturer at the University of Helsinki, Department of Economics and Management. Vinnari is an Adjunct Professor of sustainability and consumption at the University of Turku (economic sociology). He is currently working for two projects: 1. Politics, practices and the transformative potential of sustainable diets (http://sustainablediets.fi/en/ ) funded by Academy of Finland, 2. Sustainable School Meals - Unlocking the potential of the public plate towards a large-scale transition to plant-based meals in schools (https://www.sustainmeals.org/?lang=en) funded by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. His research interests are related to sustainability transition in the food system.