From Failand to Winland, 2016-2019
Winland is a multidisciplinary co-creation project on food security, water security and energy security in Finland. The Winland project looks at how food, water and energy security related pressures, shocks and policy responses affect Finland’s overall security in the future, and how we can enhance our society’s resilience related to them. The research builds on close stakeholder collaboration, and the project therefore utilises both co-creation and scenario planning as key integrative processes.
Our research takes you from Failand –failed future Finland– to Winland i.e. future Finland where environmental threats and risks have been responded to with resilient policy-making.
The starting point of our research is the question: “What kinds of security risks and threats could paralyse Finland so fundamentally that our country becomes ‘Failand’?” We argue that Failand becomes reality if two of the most fundamental elements of a functioning society fail: food security and energy security. Further, we propose that such failure can result from the sum of three components: longterm pressures + shocks & surprises + policy responses.
Addressing such an equation requires a multi-disciplinary team that works together in an interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary manner, involving the key stakeholders throughout the process. This is not easy, and we have paid particular attention to establish an integrative research and stakeholder process for our project. To do this, we will utilise a combination of scenario planning and decision analysis, supported by a series of co-creation workshops and other interaction methods.
With the help of scenarios, we will study how climate, water, food and energy related pressures, shocks & surprises and policy responses affect Finland’s overall security. The focus is on worst-case scenarios (leading to ‘Failand’), as their analysis is believed to bring the most useful new recommendations for the current security context. The research team has been put together for this very proposal and it forms a unique pool of expertise to study Finland’s overall security.
The research consists of an integrative scenarios subproject as well as of five thematic subprojects focusing on water security & climate change; food and energy security; energy policy; resilience & learning; and law. All six subprojects are supported by Interaction work,
structured around a series of co-creation workshops and ensuring active stakeholder engagement and research interaction throughout the process.
Each of the thematic subprojects will provide novel analysis on their specific themes, contributing to our seven Research Questions addressing the SRC’s Programmatic Questions. Ultimately, our project will analyse and recognise the key internal and external vulnerabilities related to Finland’s food and energy security as well as provide practical policy recommendations to both key stakeholder and general public for reducing such vulnerabilities.
Project researchers:
Sakari Höysniemi
Lauri Lähteenmäki
Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen
Project partners:
Aalto University, Finland
More information:
From Failand to Winland
Posts about the events and publication related to this project can be accessed via the hashtag Winland.