Scientific community and science funding agencies commit to cooperation on accelerating the sustainability transformation

Science creates new knowledge and enables innovation that solves global sustainability challenges. However, scientific actors must be able to better consider their activities’ impact on ecological sustainability than before.

“Our objective is to create a community of scientists and their supporters, to act as pioneers of the sustainability transformation and create solutions to global sustainability challenges, such as climate change, the loss of biodiversity and sustainable management of natural resources,” says Pekka Aula, Secretary General of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

According to the joint declaration, “it is by setting an example that we can communicate the necessity and urgency of this change”.

The undersigning organisations will strive to develop management practices that support sustainability skills and to create incentive systems that encourage sustainable action. It is also the organisations desire to focus on the societal impact of research so that the messages of science are passed on to other sectors of society. They will also try to discover common methods to analyse and monitor the ecological impacts of research and education as well as the achievement of social justice.

It is the objective of this cooperation and joint declaration to reinforce the implementation of existing commitments. It is necessary for universities, foundations and other scientific actors to reinforce and bolster both their mutual cooperation and concrete action to retain a sustainable foundation for their operations, now and in the future. The organisations invite all scientific organisations and science funding agencies to work together.

The University of Oulu has signed the declaration. "In our strategy, we are committed to promoting sustainability through education, research, societal interaction and our own operations, so it was natural to be involved. We are updating our own sustainability and responsibility programme during 2025, and the declaration will spur us forward in this work," says Anni Huovinen, Sustainability and Responsibility Specialist at the University of Oulu.

Read more about the objectives of the declaration:
Joint declaration: Scientific community and science funding agencies call for cooperation to accelerate the sustainability transformation

Do you want to join the declaration:
It is possible to join the declaration at the website of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.