Sustainable and vibrant municipalities build on environmental information
A municipality’s mission is to provide a good living environment for its current and future residents. Climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and financial problems will be increasingly demanding challenges in the future. Systematic utilisation of environmental information in planning and decision-making supports the creation of viable and sustainable municipalities.
How to ensure the benefits of environmental data in your municipality’s decision-making
Include the environment into accounting. In municipal accounting and budgeting, a good environment should be seen as an investment. Also include the costs of environmental loading and the savings made possible by environmental protection comprehensively in financial planning.
Take a firm grip on environmental problems. Make good environmental management a consistent and proactive long-term priority.
Build bridges, promote cooperation. The solving of environmental problems requires cross-sectoral operating methods and working groups, as well as active participation by residents and companies. This helps you identify the most pressing problems and ensure that solutions are fair.
Make good use of the data. There is plenty of reliable environmental data available in Finland. Make use of the data now, because the costs will also increase as the environmental load persists.
Transformations offer municipalities an opportunity for a sustainable future
Since the 1860s, Finnish municipalities have been successfully developed from a local perspective. The sustainability transformation of municipalities in the 2000s is about local responses to global megatrends and environmental changes. In municipalities, climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and the depletion of natural resources meet the ageing of the population, as well as digitalisation accelerated by artificial intelligence, in concrete terms.
The transformation offers many opportunities for both sustainable growth and smart shrinkage. Municipalities have the chance to steer the transformation through planning and procurement, by organising basic services and by supporting industries that respond to challenges in a multifunctional manner. It may also be necessary to abandon certain livelihoods.1 For example, sustainable tourism and renewable energy offer municipalities opportunities, while the cessation of peat production can reduce negative climate and water impacts. 2
Even painful changes are possible and accepted by the residents, when the measures are justified by researched information and implemented regionally fairly. According to a survey3 conducted in spring 2024, 82% of Finns accept that, in the future, decisions on restricting the consumption of natural resources and emissions would be made primarily on the basis of research data.
A healthy environment strengthens the economy
Sustainable development and environmental issues have long been part of municipal activities. It is now time to systematically set them as the basis of the entire decisionmaking and planning of the municipality in all sectors.4
It has been found that in strategic planning, budgeting and decisions focusing on financial sustainability, environmental problem solutions are easily overlooked or remain as separate projects.5 However, the economy cannot be promoted in isolation, as the economy is based on natural resources and ecosystem services. Studies show that the weakening of these weakens the operating conditions of the economy.6 On the other hand, these links provide municipalities with opportunities to steer the economy to be efficient and natural resources-saving, while minimising the environmental load. Green economy or circular economy can support environmental protection. Financial and environmental perspectives have already been linked, for example, in the Fisu network of resourcesmart pioneer cities and municipalities (fisunetwork.fi). City of Lahti adopted a climate budget and has achieved cost savings, especially through the energy saving programme and the electrification of public transport. Municipal finances can benefit from locally produced renewable energy and
improving energy efficiency. Nearly one third of Finnish municipalities belong to the Hinku network (hiilineutraalisuomi.fi), which aims for significant climate actions. Hinku municipalities aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent from 2007 levels by the year 2030.
Cooperation with residents and local companies
Hinku municipalities encourage local companies and residents to take climate action. Cooperation between different sectors, actors and administrative levels is an essential part of the solutions. In addition to climate work, utilising and enabling local activity has been found important in safeguarding the biodiversity.7
Volunteer work is powerful, but municipalities also need help to promote the sustainability transformation sufficiently fast and extensively. The risk is that some municipalities will lose industrial investments in renewable energy and the green transition, for example, while other municipalities will be able to coordinate and encourage environmental investments through determined climate plans. Consistent national politics and legislation can support the autonomy of municipalities and the implementation of environmental objectives.8
An extensive and reliable knowledge base supports sustainability management
Environmental accounting is one way of collecting information on the connections between the economy and the environment. More comprehensive methods are currently being developed to include the significance of ecosystems for the economy and wellbeing in municipal accounting.
City of Tampere has been developing a method that utilises local knowledge for monitoring changes in the monetary value of urban nature. The study showed that the ability of green areas to retain rainwater and prevent flooding is becoming increasingly valuable.9
Environmental management is not limited to the mechanical monitoring of indicators and the management of change.10 Environmental fairness is also needed, in which the views of different actors are heard and considered, so that the benefits and disadvantages of environmental measures are identified and shared fairly.11
Accurate and frugal exploitation of natural resources, while protecting nature and waters, is the most important prerequisite for municipal activities and the wellbeing of residents in the long term
It is particularly important to pay more attention to the costs of insufficient environmental investments for future generations. Concrete experiences from around the world show that, for example, the destruction of urban floods, which are increasing as a result of global warming, and the resulting costs can be prevented by investing in the green structure of cities, well in advance.12
The utilisation of environmental data has reduced the climate emissions of municipalities – but there is still work to do
Many municipalities have done good work in reducing climate emissions, but emissions must be rapidly reduced also in the future. Between 2005 and 2023, emissions decreased by 37% in total. The large differences between municipalities are explained by factors such as the structure of the economy, especially agricultural dominance, geographical characteristics such as distances and urban structure, as well as differences in weather conditions and district heating fuel use.
The bar charts show Helsinki and the five municipalities with the fastest reductions in their emissions, as well as the future emission scenario in accordance with the so-called baseline scenario. The combined emissions of all municipalities must be reduced faster than the current rate, in order to achieve the 2030 and 2050 climate targets. Source: Finnish Environment Institute. 2025.
Plenty of environmental data
Finland has plenty of municipality-specific monitoring data available on the state of the environment. For example, the modelling of air pollution emissions (syke.fi) and the urban-rural classification (ymparisto.fi, in Finnish) enable the examination of changes also regardless of administrative boundaries. Spatial data enables also extremely detailed examinations.
► More information on urban nature is available in the Syke Policy Brief: Cities can be densified in a nature-wise manner (24 March 2025, issuu.com/suomenymparistokeskus).
► A wider view of biodiversity is provided by the Luonnontila website (luonnontila.fi)
► Climate emissions of regions and municipalities (paastot.hiilineutraalisuomi.fi)
► Monitoring the built environment (ymparisto.fi, in Finnish)
► Circular economy tools and operating models (kiertotaloussuomi.fi, in Finnish)
► Key indicators of sustainable urban development (syke.fi)
► Developing ecosystem accounting (syke.fi, in Finnish)
