Joint declaration
Joint declaration: Scientific community and science funding agencies call for cooperation to accelerate the sustainability transformation
This joint declaration was prepared by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. The declaration is based on a stakeholder event for the stakeholders of the Academy of Science and Letters in 2024 and a member survey conducted of its members.
Science creates new knowledge and enables innovation that solves global sustainability challenges. However, scientific actors must begin to better consider their activities’ impact on ecological sustainability than before. The joint declaration, compiled by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, with signatures from universities, foundations and other scientific actors, extend an invitation for all organisations to work together. Our objective is to create a community of scientists and their supporters, to act as a pioneer of the sustainability transformation.
In the Finnish scientific community, awareness of the necessity of ecological sustainability and social justice is high. Many actors have placed sustainability at the core of their strategies and begun to develop their operations accordingly. Research and education create significant positive effects for Finnish society and students and scientists play a key role in enabling a more sustainable future.
However, the sustainability transformation requires new initiatives from all sectors of society. Universities, foundations and other scientific actors must reinforce and bolster both their mutual cooperation and concrete action to retain a sustainable foundation for their operations, now and in the future.
There are still challenges to enable the sustainability transformation that require the discovery of common solutions. These include concrete emissions reduction targets as well as common assessment criteria that can measure the ecological impacts of research and education and the achievement of social justice.
Key targets for development in operational activities are to reduce the emissions caused by travel and to promote more sustainable methods thereof, optimisation of the building energy efficiency and facility usage, as well as systematic analysis of the environmental impact of purchases and more joint purchases. Furthermore, it is important to create well-functioning solutions to compensate for emissions and damage to nature as well as to ensure responsible and sustainable investment activities.
Our objective is to create a community that operates at the front lines of the sustainability transformation and produces solutions to global sustainability challenges, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity and sustainable management of natural resources. It is only by setting an example that we can communicate the necessity and urgency of this change.
Our objectives are:
On the organisational level
- To take the sustainability perspective into account in daily operations and decision making.
- To develop organisational policies and guidelines in a way that they reinforce sustainable procedures, such as regarding purchases and travel.
- To ensure that up-to-date sustainability training is available in our organisations and to comprehensively include sustainability themes in all of the education that we provide.
- To develop management practices that reinforce sustainability skills and make sure that the knowledge possessed by sustainability experts is made use of in the planning of our organisation’s strategy.
- To create incentive systems that guide people to take sustainable action.
On the cooperation level
- To focus on the societal impact of research so that the messages of science pass on to other sectors of society.
- To strengthen mutual cooperation with various universities, foundations and other scientific actors to share up-to-date information and best practices. To encourage discourse on how the different starting points of the operators are considered in the allocation of resources to sustainability measures.
- To develop common methods to analyse and monitor organisational progress towards sustainability targets.
- To develop, as scientific funding agencies, methods to monitor the allocation of research funding towards critical themes of the sustainability transformation.
- To create a cultural change and focus on the necessity of the sustainability transformation and its benefits.
Through this cooperation and joint declaration, we also want to reinforce the implementation of existing commitments. We hereby invite all scientific organisations and science funding agencies to work with us.
The undersigning organisations:
The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters
University of Vaasa
Aalto University
University of Tampere
Young Academy Finland
Kone Foundation
Puistokatu 4
LUT University
University of Turku
The Council of Finnish Academies
University of Helsinki
Federation of Finnish Learned Societies
Sustainability Transformations -doctoral education pilot
TAH Foundation
University of Lapland
University of Eastern Finland
Nessling Foundation
National Defence University
The Council of Rectors of Finnish Universities
University of Oulu
University of Jyväskylä
Svenska tekniska vetenskapsakademien i Finland
The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters
UniPID, Finnish University Partnership for International Development
Hanken School of Economics
The Union of Research Professionals (Tieteentekijät)
Högskolan på Åland
Sähkötekniikan ja energiatehokkuuden edistämiskeskus STEK ry
Regarding the joint declaration
This joint declaration was prepared by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. The declaration is based on a stakeholder event for the stakeholders of the Academy of Science and Letters in 2024 and a member survey conducted of its members.
Further information:
Pekka Aula
Secretary General, Finnish Academy of Science and Letters
tel. +358 40 703 0952
pekka.aula@acadsci.fi
Contact for joining the declaration:
Linda Lammensalo
Expert, Science & Policy
tel. +358 50 308 7726
linda.lammensalo@acadsci.fi