From Introduction:

According to many rankings of sustainable development, Finland and the other Nordic Countries are among the most sustainable countries in the world. In this chapter, we take a deeper look at indicators of sustainable development and international indicies used in ranking countries. Finland is a good case for this as the country has been very keen in developing and testing sustainable development indicators already in the 1990s and has continued the work on strategies, indicators and evaluations ever since.

In addition to the indicators, we discuss special features of the Finnish society when sustainable development is considered. The Finnish government and civil society have worked for sustainable development in a unique manner and internationally distinguished way, which combines bottom-up and top-down approaches into a working model of network governance. At the same time, many active NGOs bring forth their own agenda and demand for more radical actions towards sustainability. Forest policy is one of the ever-lasting debates. Consumer movement towards more sustainable food system including veganism is a more recent phenomenon. In the chapter, these discussions serve as examples of how framing sustainable development and sustainability changes over time.

The chapter starts with discussing generally indicators and indices in the context of sustainability and on their role in furthering sustainable development. Then we shed light on the Finnish sustainability governance and the role of indicators in that. We move to the questions of sustainable consumption and production, which discuss especially through the cases of food and forestry. Finally, we assess critically the Finnish success in being a sustainable country.