Cross-fertilisation is interaction or interchange, as between cultures, fields of activity, or knowledge, that is mutually beneficial and productive. Together with the Prime Minister’s Office and Ministry of Environment we have started to explore how biodiversity could be transformed into all-of-government ownership. How could this cross-fertilisation look between the ministries as well as within their agencies, institutes, and service providers?
This blog is about an initiative by a multidisciplinary group of students to address biodiversity issues in Finland in cooperation with the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of the Environment. We recognize the urgency of the biodiversity crisis and the complexity of governance structures. While we also recognize that there are time constraints to finding quick solutions, we are committed to considering proposals to address the challenge. The group’s approach involves conducting research, mapping governance systems, and engaging with relevant stakeholders. We emphasize the importance of understanding the different perspectives on biodiversity that exist to reach a common understanding and address the problem effectively. The team includes people with backgrounds in design, architecture, and sustainable development, reflecting a holistic approach to problem-solving.
This blog post is the first post by Group 1B on their project on biodiversity policy coherence at an interdepartmental level at the Ministry of the Environment. It covers background reading, a roundtable with external partners and the development of a research agenda.
Project Description Finland has 41 national parks, which are conservation areas. Visitor numbers of protected and recreational areas in Finland are growing, especially in national parks. In 2021, there were over 4 million visitors to national parks, which is 25% more than in 2019. However, visitor footprint and interactions with nature can hurt the environment … Read more
In this blog, I’ll describe the thinking process towards our final proposal the Nuuksio Collaboratory. It is a one-year program where visitors of Nuuksio National Park participate in a citizen science project led by Metsähallitus scientists to co-create solutions for the local biodiversity loss.
From co-creation workshops to validation with Metsähallitus to our team’s ‘aha’ moment. Finally, we have arrived at the final proposal of growing nature-savvy visitors in the Finnish national parks by finishing it up with an in-person presentation on May 23.
This blog goes through the final steps in the process of team 1C to our final design proposal to Metsähallitus and the Ministry of Environment, and our efforts to combine human-centered design methods and environmental sustainability. It explores the role of design for government, in this case for a state-owned enterprise, in the Anthropocene.
This blog post describes our process and steps of the last few weeks to get closer to our solution. We got inspiration in developing a design intervention that aims to improve shared understanding amongst Metsähallitus departments and preserve the biodiversity of national parks by applying the policy lab tool.
By forming our user scenario, we can find inspiration in developing nudges that serve to improve the visitor experience and protect the biodiversity of national parks. This method of working not only connects us to the problem area we look to solve but helps us to get closer to our design intervention.
Climate change is taking its toll on biodiversity everywhere but something lurking in the shadows of public media is the visitors’ contribution to biodiversity loss in national parks. Ideologies of systems thinking helped us to understand this spider legged topic further and eventually even led us to our problem area: Value of the guidelines is not realized by the visitors in relation to their impacts to biodiversity.