Voluntary participation for sustainability transition: experiences from the ‘Commitment to Sustainable Development 2050’

ABSTRACT

Voluntary and active participation by a wide variety of actors is a prerequisite for successful societal transitions towards sustainability. The ‘Commitment to Sustainable Development 2050’ is a national-level initiative in Finland, aiming to mobilise a large-scale transition involving various societal actors through openly communicated commitments to concrete actions. Each commitment should focus on at least one of the eight nationally defined sustainability objectives connected to the global Sustainable Development Goals. This article assesses the implementation and the development needs of the commitment process based on a range of materials. The results highlight the importance of securing adequate resources for long-term coordination and continuous development of the commitment process, trust creation through long-term and open communication, and flexibility allowing for experimentation aimed at finding new modes of interaction between the public and private sectors.

KEYWORDS:

• Agenda 2030
• multi-stakeholder partnerships
• sustainable development goals
• sustainability
• transition management
• voluntary participation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [297742].