Sustainability Science Days (SSD) is a multi-day summit for groundbreaking, transdisciplinary research. It is the biggest sustainability science conference in Finland. SSD brings together the academic community, international top speakers, societal changemakers, and the public to create knowledge, actions, and solutions for a sustainable future. Its mission is to respond to the high demands and growing megatrends of sustainability science and bring society’s changemakers together to co-create a common understanding and knowledge about the sustainability crisis and to act in concert towards a global transformation for a sustainable future.
A pre-conference day on May 23 highlighted the case-based and challenge-focused online education courses held through EDUCase, a pilot initiative of the Finnish Ministry for Education and Culture’s Global Programme 2021-2024. EDUCase brings together students, researchers, practitioners, and professors from Finland and countries in Sub-Saharan African and South Asia.
The core of the conference consisted of presentations and workshops across sustainability science disciplines; topics included art in the Finnish mires, energy costs and housing, biodiversity in urban environments, and tools such as imagining and co-designing with communities. The final day was organized with the City of Helsinki and included a discussion on the city’s progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. Mayor Juhana Vartiainen gave a welcoming address and was followed by a panel comprising of global experts in climate change and urban systems.
Over 600 participants joined the seminars, discussions, and panels either in person or online. Stay tuned for updates for SSD 2024, which will be held June 10-15 in tandem with the Sustainability Research and Innovation (SRI) conference.