Annual report 2025

Syke celebrated its first three decades

The Finnish Environment Institute began its operations as the successor to the National Board of Water and the Environment on 1 March 1995, making 2025 Syke’s 30th anniversary. The motto of the anniversary year was “Cherish the good”, through which we wished to emphasise the nature of sustainability transformation in society. A rapid transition to ways of working that keep us within the limits of the planet’s carrying capacity makes it possible to preserve clean air and water, a favourable climate and functioning ecosystems, as well as the foundations of our economic system – in other words, to cherish what is good. We celebrated the anniversary not only within our own work community, but also in many ways together with our partners and stakeholders.

Challenges in the midst of celebration

In 2025, it became clear that Syke’s five-year growth phase would come to an end and that a period of decreasing budgets lay ahead. The Government made decisions aimed at balancing central government finances, which will reduce Syke’s operating expenditure funding for 2026 by more than 7%, with further significant reductions planned for 2027 and 2028.

At the same time, competition for research funding intensified. Following the new budget cuts, it quickly became apparent that Syke would not be able to balance its finances without rapid reductions in personnel. In November, statutory co-operation negotiations were initiated for financial and operational reasons. Overall, the number of employees is estimated to decrease by approximately 15% by 2028.

Everyday work continued despite the crisis

Despite the challenging economic outlook, Syke’s operations met their targets in 2025. Syke played an important role in reforming environmental regulation and supporting its implementation, for example in improving the status of waters and the marine environment, strengthening biodiversity, and promoting a carbon-neutral society, sustainable cities and the circular economy.

We made a strong contribution to the preparation of the national restoration plan. Together with the Ministry of the Environment and key national actors, we drew up a roadmap for the development of Finland’s network of marine protected areas until 2030. In our expert role, we also participated in maintaining the national overview of the offshore wind power sector and in selecting areas to be tendered for offshore wind development.

We supported the development of long-term solutions to promote carbon neutrality through extensive cooperation. We prepared a Strategic Environmental Assessment of the National Energy and Climate Strategy and the Medium-term Climate Change Plan and assessed the timeliness of the objectives of the Climate Change Act.

Syke is an active member of the national environmental administration,  which underwent major changes in 2025 during the reform of the state’s regional administration. We participated in the preparation of a  joint data strategy for 2025–2030. In addition, we ensured that when the new agency structure came into force at the beginning of 2026, the information systems used by the former ELY Centres operated effectively within the new structure and that users had access to the systems they required.

Work remained efficient and high in quality

As a research institute, Syke’s outputs are largely intangible and beyond operational impact, efficiency and productivity are often difficult to measure unambiguously. In 2025, both the absolute number of scientific articles and the number of articles per researcher-year increased, although the total number of publications decreased by approximately 13% compared with 2024. Quality indicators once again showed that Syke’s research is of a very high standard and among the best in the country.

The total cost of Syke’s operations was EUR 77.6 million, representing an increase of 3.6% compared with 2024. The share of core activities in total costs rose by two percentage points to 80 per cent, while the costs of support activities decreased by half a million euros.

A new era requires a new strategic direction

The year 2025 marked the conclusion of Syke’s previous strategy cycle, and a new strategy for 2026–2030 was developed. Our vision remains to support sustainability transition. Our core activities will focus more closely on making society’s key systems sustainable. Through research, we develop solutions to address sustainability challenges in the energy system, the food system, other production systems, and in land use and the built environment.

In our organisational development, we will focus particularly on strengthening data-driven management, data governance and the sustainable use of artificial intelligence. We will also invest in partnership work and strategic communications, as well as in the competence of our personnel and sound financial management. We are further developing our unique environmental information value chain, particularly towards innovative services for society. In line with our slogan, we will continue to create hope through research in the new strategy period.