Policy Coherence in Biodiversity

Project Description The EU LIFE biodiversity project is an eight-year funding mechanism to combat biodiversity loss in Finland. The Prime Minister’s Office’s goal is to develop cooperation between ministries to ensure that biodiversity issues are incorporated better into policy-making. There is a lack of policy coherence in the current siloed approach to biodiversity, which leads … Read more

Rooted in Values

This blog post reports on work-in-progress within the DfG course! The post is written by group 1C dealing with the Prime Minister’s Office and Ministry of Environment’s brief on ‘Mainstreaming Biodiversity’. The group includes Dinah Coops and Anna Halvorsen from Creative Sustainability program, Sari Kukkasniemi from Collaborative and Industrial Design program, and Thao Nguyen from … Read more

Finally, time to get our hands dirty!

This blog post updates group 1B’s progress on tackling biodiversity policy coherence for the Finnish Ministry of Environment. It covers the second half of the project, where the team start deploying design methods and interventions for policy. Looking ahead to the ideation session with the civil servants, the team is approaching the final design proposal soon.

Small Actions = BIG Impact

Among our general policymakers who are path-independent and insusceptible to change, some individuals are motivated to take initiative and bring radical transformation within their organization. Together with our partner, the Prime Minister’s Office (VNK), we see these “Change Agents” as potential actors for achieving Finland’s biodiversity goals. Small actions by these change agents can have big impacts on supporting policy coherence for biodiversity.

Cross-pollinating in the ministerial policy ecosystem

Utilizing leverage points and bounded rationality, our Aalto University Design for Government team is developing three key ideas to foster connections between nature, the Finnish Ministry of the Environment and their supporting agencies. Our aim? To nurture mutual understanding, fun and strong relationships, smoothing the way to cohesive biodiversity policies for future generations.

Exploring the Vertical Ecosystem

The working title of our project is “Exploring the Vertical Ecosystem”. Just like an ecosystem, we see the different agencies and research institutes affiliated to The Ministry of Environment as entagled and interconnected, feeding off of and into each other. At this point in our project we have concluded our research phase, taking a keen interest in the human perspective of the system.

The Hidden Realities of Civil Servants

During the past few weeks, we dove into the Ministry of Environment. Our interviews revealed that behind all biodiversity policies are civil servants, whose realities are shaped by human interaction and experiences. At the end of our research we connected the dots, which created a picture of barriers to the biodiversity policy coherence we yearn for.