Suchergebnisse

Urban policymakers of the 2020s must act within various types of wicked socio-ecological disruptions. Under deep uncertainty and time pressure, they must make decisions which will define the scope of possible actions in the future. Our aim was to develop a research instrument that would enable researchers and practitioners to learn about such policymaking. We designed and ran a half-day simulation exercise, the Policy Operations Room (POR). The participants were the top politicians and a group of senior experts from the City of Helsinki, Finland. The design of the exercise was based on a review of simulation and gaming research literature. The exercise managed to integrate - albeit imperfectly - the utilitarian and emancipatory dimensions in futures studies: it gave the participants the utilitarian possibility to practice decision-making and the emancipatory possibility to critically reflect on decision-making in wicked, science-based scenarios. It also gave the researchers a chance to witness urgent decision-making in action. Issues deserving further attention include the inclusion of social-political complexity in the scenarios and practitioner involvement in the design process of the exercise. All in all, the POR constitutes a unique way of integrating science-based assessment of future path dependencies into science-policy research and interaction. ; Peer reviewed

AbstractBefore the COVID‐19 pandemic, infectious disease experts had postulated that the next pandemic is only a matter of time, and Finland, among other nations, had prepared for it. Yet the COVID‐19 pandemic crossed the customary political, functional, and temporal boundaries of crisis management to a surprising degree. This study analyses pandemic preparedness among Finnish infectious disease experts at the central government level before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic (2017–2021). The study is based on interview material, participant observation in the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare's infectious disease unit in 2017, and health security‐related document analysis. By analyzing expert perceptions of preparedness in two points of time, the study provides insights on the challenges that increasingly transboundary crises have posed for preparedness efforts. The experts perceived that pandemic preparedness would benefit from a more generic approach to planning and from more comprehensive risk assessments and policy advice. The analysis shows that Finnish crisis management had overlooked the extent of transboundedness of present‐day crises and is lacking consideration of how crises turn into chronic conditions that deplete capacities over time. The crisis man.agement regime needs to develop structures to better analyze systemic risks and to extend its timeframe to cover long‐term crises.

In security and foreign policy discourse, environmental issues have been discussed increasingly as security threats that require immediate action. Yet, as the traditional security sector does not provide straightforward means to deal with climate change and other environmental issues, this has prompted concerns over undue securitisation and ill-placed extreme measures. We argue that an effective policy to address foreseeable environmental security threats can only be developed and maintained by ensuring that it remains resolutely within the domain of civil society. In this article, we consider the case of Finland, where the policy concept of comprehensive security has been presented as the official guideline for security and preparedness activities in different sectors. Comprehensive security aims to safeguard the vital functions of society through cooperation between authorities, business operators, organisations, and citizens. We analyse the opportunities and challenges of Finland's comprehensive security policy in addressing environmental changes through a three-level framework of local, geopolitical and structural security impacts. Our empirical evidence is based on a set of expert interviews (n = 40) that represent a wide range of fields relevant to unconventional security issues. We find that the Finnish comprehensive security model provides an example of a wide and inclusive perspective to security which would allow for taking into account environmental security concerns. However, due to major challenges in the implementation of the model, it does not fully incorporate the long-term, cross-sectoral, and cascading aspects of environmental threats. This weakens Finland's preparedness against climate change which currently poses some of the most urgent environmental security problems. ; Peer reviewed

In security and foreign policy discourse, environmental issues have been discussed increasingly as security threats that require immediate action. Yet, as the traditional security sector does not provide straightforward means to deal with climate change and other environmental issues, this has prompted concerns over undue securitisation and ill-placed extreme measures. We argue that an effective policy to address foreseeable environmental security threats can only be developed and maintained by ensuring that it remains resolutely within the domain of civil society. In this article, we consider the case of Finland, where the policy concept of comprehensive security has been presented as the official guideline for security and preparedness activities in different sectors. Comprehensive security aims to safeguard the vital functions of society through cooperation between authorities, business operators, organisations, and citizens. We analyse the opportunities and challenges of Finland's comprehensive security policy in addressing environmental changes through a three-level framework of local, geopolitical and structural security impacts. Our empirical evidence is based on a set of expert interviews (n = 40) that represent a wide range of fields relevant to unconventional security issues. We find that the Finnish comprehensive security model provides an example of a wide and inclusive perspective to security which would allow for taking into account environmental security concerns. However, due to major challenges in the implementation of the model, it does not fully incorporate the long-term, cross-sectoral, and cascading aspects of environmental threats. This weakens Finland's preparedness against climate change which currently poses some of the most urgent environmental security problems.