Strategic Research - Scientific Conference: A fair, just and sustainable society

Watch the keynotes:

• Teea Kortetmäki: Making sense of just transition
• Peter Newell: Power Shift: The Political Economy of Just Transitions

Framing the Conference:

The turbulence in an ever-changing world accelerated due to the Covid-19 pandemic and recent geopolitical crisis. A fair, just and sustainable society, leaving no one behind, is one of the top targets of the United Nations sustainability goals 2030. The European Union and the member states have committed to this target through the European sustainable growth strategy - The European Green Deal.

The Strategic Research Council instrument is designed to deliver policy-relevant findings for pressing societal challenges. An effective transition towards a fair, just and sustainable society is one such challenge. These themes are debated in politics and public discussions: how a welfare society has afforded a good life for everyone, and what would be the good life if the current level of consumption and material wellbeing cannot be kept. Effective and fair transition combines many different aspects and disciplines in addressing the questions on fair and just transition, its definition and interpretation. It covers and integrates multiple research areas such as demography, employment, economy, resilience, climate change mitigation, natural resources, health and wellbeing, globalization, international politics and geopolitics. The evidence-based solutions are foreseen to become a needed part of typical narrative-based decision-making, demanding new types of policy design and implementation processes in the near and distant future.

The conference's overall aim is to bring together scholars that have a common interest in exploring responses to societal challenges in a fair, just and sustainable society. The conference will foster an exchange of ideas, approaches and insights between the disciplines. We are also looking for insights into theoretical and methodological problems related to studying a fair, just and sustainable society. In addition, we encourage researchers to share their experiences and best practices and stumbling blocks to increase the societal impact of their research. Presentations can highlight successes or failures in interacting with different stakeholders, sharing information and co-creating knowledge about a fair, just and sustainable society.

The conference is hosted by the research programmes of the Strategic Research Council.

For whom: The Conference is targeted at researchers within projects financed by the Strategic Research Council, in particular, but it is open to all interested scholars who wish to present and debate research dealing with a fair, just and sustainable society.