2035Legitimacy research question
What concrete measures can support Finland’s planned transition to a carbon neutral welfare state by 2035 and strengthen the legitimacy of Finland’s climate policies?
Taking Finland’s 2035 carbon neutrality goal as the starting point, the project employs a multidisciplinary approach to examine its legitimacy and the possibilities for strengthening the goal’s legitimacy, especially from the citizens’ perspective.
The project seeks to identify the key legitimacy challenges arising from Finland’s planned carbon neutrality transition and find ways to address them.
The project builds on the idea that the 2035 carbon neutrality target cannot be imposed on a democratic society; instead, it requires widespread social acceptance from various actors.
The project explores issues such as the fairness and legitimacy of climate policies in general, the impacts on employment and income distribution, climate citizenship, and the barriers and opportunities for public participation in climate policy processes. The project also explores how the key climate policy decisions made at international and EU level influence the legitimacy of Finland’s climate policy, the understanding of the climate impacts of Finland’s carbon neutrality policy, and the building of legitimacy by means of climate science.
The 2035Legitimacy project brings together researchers in the fields of law, economics, sociology, and climate science.
The project is truly multidisciplinary, pursuing collaboration and dialogue across different disciplines while examining legitimacy considerations in Finnish climate policy.
The project is truly multidisciplinary, pursuing collaboration and dialogue across different disciplines while examining legitimacy considerations in Finnish climate policy.
The project involves both researchers with extensive experience and those in the early stages of their research career.
This, together with a multidisciplinary approach and co-creation with a wide range of stakeholders, creates a unique combination, both from the perspective of research and the collaboration and interaction related to it.
The participating researchers have published widely on a variety of issues, such as legitimacy and justice in the context of international law and climate law; impacts of climate policies on competitiveness and jobs; climate citizenship; transparency and public participation in EU law and international climate negotiations, and climate and health impacts of various climate simulation scenarios with different policy scenarios.
The 2035Legitimacy project builds on multi- and interdisciplinary research questions.
Examples include joint empirical research by economists and sociologists combining econometric and survey methods to study the acceptability of climate policies amongst different actors.
In the field of law, experts in international and EU law join forces to study “law in action”; for example, how citizens and stakeholders are engaged in climate policy processes at multiple levels, taking the Aarhus Convention’s core principles as the starting point.
The consortium as a whole is engaged in the process of creating scenarios that integrate different climate policy options based on climate models from climate science to find out what different policy measures would mean in terms of adverse health impacts caused by climate change.
Collaboration across institutional boundaries
The 2035Legitimacy project collaboration involves three universities and three research institutions.
The research conducted in the project is organised as several work packages that carry out research together across institutional boundaries. Most of the work packages include researchers from more than one organisation. In addition to this, research cooperation does not only take place within the work packages but also between them, amongst the different researchers and institutions.
Concrete ways of collaboration across institutional boundaries within the project include shared research questions, use of shared data, and meetings within the project across the work packages to plan research and find synergies, shared ideas, and new perspectives.
At a later stage, the project will promote the researchers’ joint writing, in the form of workshops, for example, as well as co-creation of project conclusions and key policy messages.
The 2035Legitimacy project invests much effort in interaction between a range of stakeholders and social spheres.
The project taps into the participating researchers’ and institutions’ existing broad networks in various fields, but also seeks to find new partners to engage in the project.
The project has an experienced and multidisciplinary advisory board with both Finnish and international experts as members.
They represent a broad spectrum of research, administration and third-sector actors relevant for the project, including universities and research institutions, Finnish ministries, and NGOs.
One of the advisory board’s key tasks is to help ensure the project’s high scientific quality and societal relevance. This is facilitated by the board’s regular meetings, opportunities to comment on the research questions and results, and the mid-term evaluation of the project.
Aimed at communicating with various societal actors and citizens, the project creates short, popularised policy briefs, blog posts, and press releases, as well as organises a variety of events.
In addition, the project participates in relevant events (seminars, webinars, workshops, etc.) organised by others, particularly those based on collaboration with the other projects in the SCR’s CLIMATE programme.
The goal of interaction throughout the project’s duration is not only to disseminate information to as wide an audience as possible about the project but also to actively engage different actors in it. Through the various channels of interaction, stakeholders, partners, and other interested parties, will have a chance to participate in the discussion in the context of the project.
Where appropriate, this means participating in defining the project’s research questions, developing research ideas, sharing information and experiences, analysing and commenting on research results, and shaping them towards political guidelines and decisions.
The project will employ and develop a variety of co-creation methods that will be used both within the project and as part of regular interaction between different actors and social spheres.