Societal change unit
Societal change unit promotes our strategic objective of becoming a pioneer in the environmental information value chain. This objective is achieved through Syke’s networked research and expert work to improve the production and dissemination of information and to support societal decision-making.
Unit director
Riikka Paloniemi
The following groups are working under the Societal change unit:
- Politics of knowledge: group manager Soile Kulmala
- Governing transformation: group manager Kaisa Korhonen-Kurki
- Justice and agency: group manager Maija Faehnle
- Science-policy support: group manager Marja Salo
Development manager of the societal change unit:
The duties of the groups under the Societal change unit:
Politics of knowledge group
- studies and develops changes paths and steps,
- studies the politics of knowledge, institutional knowledge and knowledge-based decision- making,
- develops evaluation of the effects of knowledge-intensive policy programmes and preliminary assessment,
- studies and develops forecasting, identification of megatrends and silent signals, and construction of future scenarios,
- enhances the power of change in the value chain of environmental knowledge.
Governing transformation group
- studies the politics and management of the sustainability transformation, and develops methods related to these,
- assesses and develops governing means and mechanisms,
- analyses the coherence of politics, synergies of various sectors and syntheses of governing methods,
- studies the power of change of governing methods and policies and develops means for enhancing it.
Justice and agency group
- Analyses the distribution of the impacts of the sustainability transformation across society, spanning different levels of governance and sectors, and develop means to enhance the fairness of the transformation.
- Examines societal conflicts, sore points, social practices, and behaviours influencing the sustainability transformation, and develop governance methods for an acceptable transformation.
- Investigates and renews the involvement and participation of citizens, businesses, and other societal actors in defining and promoting the sustainability transformation.
- Studies citizen science and promote its application in environmental research.
Science-policy support group
- Analyses and enhances the effectiveness of the dialogue between science and the wider society.
- Manages the tasks of the secretariats for nature and climate panels.
- Develops and coordinates the communication and impact of national science panels.
- Promotes effective, cross-cutting sustainability transformation communication within the Finnish Environment Institute and as part of the interaction between science and policy.