Paula Lehtomaki speaking to a group of journalists from 16 nations who were on a media tour recently at Prime Minister's office at Helsinki.
Helsinki: The UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which aims at ensuring sustainable development includes 17 goals and 169 targets that must be achieved by 2030. This agenda requires transition towards a circular economy, efficient use of natural resources, more recycling of wastes and implementing sustainable production methods and ways of consumption.
Finland has adopted the world’s first national road map to circular economy making the UN sustainable goals very important framework globally agreed on, in addition to the direction to which Finnish development is moving, according to a senior Finnish official.
“The big issue of 2030 agenda for us is the homework which we have started implementing at a broad national scale where stakeholders, committee for sustainable development, trade unions, different kinds of NGOs are represented,” said Paula Lehtomaki, State Secretary to the Prime Minister of Finland.
“In Finland, we have started the national implementation process. The developed countries are supporting developing countries in achieving these goals which require transitions towards circular economy,” she added.
The sustainable development committee has set a plan, Finland 2050, which is a kind of national vision, where civil society is included along direction Finland is willing to develop within the framework of the UN 2030 agenda, Paula Lehtomaki stressed. “This was followed by developing government’s own action plan with certain focus including reaching climate objectives by 2020, cleantech, sustainable use of natural resources, efficient circular economy among others,” she said.
According to the State Secretary to the Prime Minister, there are five key projects the government is working on to achieve these goals containing carbon-free clean and renewable energy, new products from forests, viable food production and thriving blue economy and nature policy based on trust and finally breakthrough to the circular economy.
At the citizens level, she said, Finland has also created sustainable development commitment tool, which is network based. Ordinary citizens, companies, different actors can make a voluntary commitment.
“Last year when we celebrated one hundred years of independence of Finland, we also boosted these commitment tools as one of the requirements for partnership with companies,” Paula Lehtomaki told a group of journalists from 16 nations which visited Helsinki on a media tour recently at the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and The Peninsula was part of the group.
There are two ways of implementing the direction even without making national legislation; first is banning plastic bags, defining why to use them and how much to use them. “Many stakeholders have taken their own initiative to reduce its use and showed commitment, therefore, we did not need to make legislation on this issue but we have made an agreement on the way plastic bags should be used.”
The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change ( IPCC) report in October this year urged emission cuts by the IPCC 1.5 degrees, Finland’s Prime Minister Juha Sipila said in remark to the report “in light of the landmark UN climate report, it is clear that Finland must do more – and faster – to help limit climate change”, adding that the measures needed to lower emissions will not all be easy for the country.
Asked whether the end of the term of government next April will affect the policy on circular economy and carbon neutral goals, she said: “I do not see so big political forces that could change the carbon-neutral goal, but there are some discussions related to forests”.
“Rain forest is carbon sink and in Finland we are cutting forest much less than they are growing which means there is growing sink. There is political discussion about if there is enough growing sink. Finland has a policy to increase the area of forests in some areas,” she said.
Forest area in Finland was reported at 73.11% in 2015, according to the World Bank. There are many big forest companies trying to develop their products and forest raw materials.
But the government believes the need for dialogue among the different political actors in the country as Prime Minister Sipila stated, “In order for the decision-making to be sufficiently long-term, it is essential to carry on a dialogue over government and party lines.”
If exports raised, Paula Lehtomaki said, this shows that wastes have been valuable stuff which means more economic sustainability can be achieved by increasing recycling of wastes and there are technologies that split the wastes more precisely to make valuable assets from them. “The price of raw materials is increasing and this makes recycling more sustainable economically to recycle wastes and use the recycled materials again and again. The need to lower emissions is creating a vast market for new technological solutions and could offer an opportunity for Finland to emerge as a leading power in the fight against climate change,” she added.
Despite the success transition towards the circular economy, one of the challenges, according to Lehtomaki, for Finland now is the reduction of traffic emission and she said, “We have been proceeding in such a way that there is some responsibility to put renewable bio element which significantly reduces the emission and now there is 30 percent use of bio fuels in Finland.”
