Publications

The newly published TGC Discussion paper A conceptual review on the systems perspectives on green innovation deals with the theoretical foundations and empirical approaches for studying green innovation. This discussion paper is meant as an open invitation to discuss methodological approaches and the implications of the green transition for innovation policy. We welcome comments and suggestions with any new perspectives! The discussion paper is written as part of the Systems perspectives on Green Innovation (GRINGO) project, conducted by Nordregio within the work programme of the Nordic Thematic Group for Green, Innovative and Resilient Regions 2021-2024. GRINGO aims at uncovering existing bottlenecks to innovation that may impede change and the green transition, from a systemic perspective. To do this, the project investigates the link between agency (the role of different actors) and innovation. The discussion paper is the outcome of the first phase of GRINGO, which explored key concepts, their application, and their theoretical and policy traditions. It conceptualizes the terms ‘systems’, ‘innovation’ and ‘green’ and reviews them in the context of the ‘green transition’. The paper provides an overview of how the academic debate has developed around the drivers of innovation, from the old structure-agency discourse to the relevance of systems, place, and purpose. Furthermore, the paper elaborates on how innovation policy has been framed and changed over time based on that evolving understanding on innovation. Finally, the current policy climate surrounding green transitions, is discussed, which has risen expectations on the potential of innovation policy in addressing the complex societal and environmental challenges of today. The second phase of the GRINGO project will focus on empirical case study work on selected sectors in the Nordic countries. The results of this work will be available during 2023. We welcome comments and suggestions with any new perspectives!

The newly published Discussion paper on Digitalisation of Food Systems delves into one of the BioBaltic project focus areas, digitalisation in food systems. Part I provides a concept overview and relevance in Nordic and Baltic countries. Part II delves into the Vidzeme Region case-study in Latvia. We welcome comments and suggestions with any new perspectives! Digitalisation is the process of large-scale adoption of digital technologies and is one contemporary trend affecting all economic sectors and society at large. In food systems, digital technologies have been implemented for decades, but the so-called digital transformation and requirements for more sustainable practices in food value chains have added pressure on the need for a speedy and large-scale implementation of existing and new innovations. The discussion paper provides a conceptual framework of digitalisation in food systems, accompanied by a closer examination of the key issues at hand in Vidzeme region, a case study area in Latvia. The paper aims to gain a better understanding of the current state of and development opportunities of digitalisation, and the role of different forms of collaboration in this context. Furthermore, this paper is meant to spark discussion amongst partners, stakeholders, and a general audience about the technological, institutional and governance aspects that need to be addressed to be able to seize the opportunities of improving food systems via the application of digital tools.

This issue of the Nordic economic policy review surveys the economic repercussions of the pandemic and the health and economic policies introduced to minimise its impact in the Nordic countries. Although national policies were broadly similar, they also differed in many respects. Given that some enjoyed greater success than others, comparing different policies and their effects may yield valuable lessons for the future. The Nordic countries weathered the COVID-19 pandemic relatively well compared to most other high-income countries, both in terms of public health and economic repercussions. Infection and excess mortality rates were comparatively low in the Nordic Region, except in Sweden, where they relied more on recommendations and guidelines than mandatory measures to contain the spread of the virus. The fall in GDP was also comparatively small and short-lived in all of the countries except Iceland, where tourism plays a more prominent role in the economy. In this review, we present a broad range of policy-relevant articles on a variety of issues. Two of the articles comparing economic policies and outcomes include countries from outside the Nordic Region. The article by Torben Andersen, Steinar Holden, and Seppo Honkapohja focuses on the macroeconomy. The one by Werner Eichhorst and Johannes Brunner focuses on the labour market.

The Nordregio Strategy 2021-2024 outlines our main mission and core research focus areas, which have been carefully aligned to address the key objectives and needs of policymakers and practitioners outlined within Nordic cooperation steering documents. In recent years, there has been a convergence of several global megatrends which are having a major impact on all aspects of the Nordic economy, society and environment. Climate change, migration, rapid demographic developments, digitalization and automation, increasing urban-rural divides, and growing socio-economic inequalities are some of the main threats facing the Nordic Region. Nordregio is focused on identifying practical Nordic policy solutions to help overcome these challenges and promote socio-economic growth and environmental sustainability across the Nordic Region. The Nordregio Strategy 2021-2024 has been written as a collaborative effort by our staff members in close cooperation with Nordregio’s Board of Directors, which represents the Nordic countries, Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland. The overarching goals that guide Nordregio’s research are outlined in the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Action Plan for Vision 2030, which is approved by the Ministers for Nordic Co-operation. The Action Plan defines the work to achieve the objectives of the Vision through a series of initiatives linked to the Vision’s three strategic priorities: a green Nordic Region, a competitive Nordic Region, and a socially sustainable Nordic Region. During the 2021-2024 period, Nordregio is committed to delivering high quality scientific, evidence-based research designed to provide policymakers and practitioners with sustainable policies to help overcome the main challenges faced by Nordic regions and municipalities. Our research will contribute substantially towards Nordic cooperation and synergies, while also showcasing Nordic policies, experience and competences internationally. The Board approved the Nordregio Strategy on the 15th of April 2021.

With this document, Nordregio provides a final status of the professional work for the activities across and within the Thematic Groups after four years and three months of the Nordic Cooperation Programme for Regional Development and Planning (NCP-RDP). In this final report, one will find an overview of the projects carried out by each TG, including a brief abstract of achieved results. Links to further details are provided for each of the projects.

Marine Spatial Planning (MSP), as with any other type of planning, is not just about the plans and their content, but the process of making those plans. Incorporating expert knowledge and the perspectives of different sea users and interest groups through stakeholder involvement (SI) processes is a central element in the design and implementation of marine spatial plans (MSPs). This handbook explores some of the key issues relating to SI in MSP, including: How to think about involving stakeholders? How to understand their needs? Who to involve? When is the appropriate time to involve them? What methods and tools are needed? What are the drawbacks? And how can a process leader carry out an effective, transparent and fair process? This handbook provides practitioners with some practical answers to these questions by offering a framework for systematically thinking about SI in the MSP process. The ideas and approaches to SI outlined are based on first-hand experiences from planners in the Baltic Sea Region and cover the whole of the MSP policy cycle. Executive summaries The executive summaries outlining the conceptual framework, general principles, methodologies and future directions of the stakeholder engagement in MSP are available in six languages: Danish English Finnish German Latvian Swedish BONUS BASMATI project has received funding from BONUS (Art 185), funded jointly by the EU and Innovation Fund Denmark, Swedish Research Council Formas, Academy of Finland, Latvian Ministry of Education and Science, and Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH (Germany).

This short report is aimed at informing policy makers, planners, regional stakeholders and researchers on how the project’s outcomes can be used in practice. The Baltic Sea Region covers a vast geographical area with the Baltic Sea being its focal point. Traditionally the sea has been connecting the region, being the main means of transportation and trade. The region has a long cooperation tradition, bringing together regional players to address common challenges. Shaping the future has been a long time concern for the Baltic Sea Region. VASAB, Visions and Strategies around the Baltic Sea States, intergovernmental cooperation of ten Baltic Sea states, supports territorial development and also has, already from 2009 developed a Long-Term Perspective for the region identifying regional assets, development trends and challenges that may affect the development of the Baltic Sea Region. Scenarios and in particular territorial scenarios can be a useful tool to further inform and support policymakers in preparing for and shaping the future. To better support and update its work, VASAB initiated the ESPON targeted analysis project ‘Territorial Scenarios for the Baltic Sea Region 2050’. 

Ålands landsbygdsutvecklingsprogram perioden 2014-2020 Utvärderingens syfte är att förbättra kvaliteten, effektiviteten och måluppfyllelsen för det åländska landsbygdsutvecklingsprogrammets 2014-2020 (Ålands landskapsregering, 2017) genomförande. Programmets målsättning är att bidra till en mer hållbar ekonomisk och smart utveckling som fokuserar på produktivitet och miljömässig hållbarhet och skall ge lönsamma och livskraftiga lantbruksföretag, ett aktivt lantbruk och en attraktiv landsbygd. Landsbygdsprogrammet för Åland omfattar totalt en budget uppgående till 58,5 miljoner euro, varav EU delfinansierar programmet med 20,7 miljoner euro.

Migration to the Nordic region increased strongly during the refugee crisis in 2015. On a per-capita basis, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have taken in more asylum seekers than most other European countries. In the coming years, these refugees and subsequent newcomers have to be integrated into the Nordic labour markets, if asylum is granted. This will be an extremely challenging process. All Nordic countries are characterised by significant employment gaps between natives and foreign born, with particularly large gaps existing in Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Refugees in particular are more dependent on welfare support and less likely to be employed than natives. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have analysed measures to promote employment among migrants. Nonetheless, a systematic review of how different policies influence employment rates of refugees and other migrant groups in the Nordic countries has not been available previously. A new report produced by Nordregio for the Nordic Council of Ministers now gives an overview of existing measures to integrate immigrants into the Nordic labour market including policy recommendations and outlines of best practice. The following policy briefs are excerpts from the report Integrating Immigrants into the Nordic Labour Markets: Integrating Immigrants into the Nordic Labour Markets: An Overall Perspective, by Lars Calmfors and Nora Sánchez Gassen Active labour-market policies and newly arrived immigrants, by Pernilla Andersson Joona Immigration and social insurance design, by Bernt Bratsberg, Oddbjørn Raaum and Knut Røed Education policies for adolescent immigrants, by Anders Böhlmark Wage policies and the integration of immigrants, by Simon Ek and Per Skedinger How should the integration effort be organised?, by Vibeke Jakobsen and Torben Tranæs Policies promoting higher employment for non-Western immigrant women, by Jacob Nielsen Arendt and Marie Louise Schultz-Nielsen Education efforts and the integration of immigrants, by Tuomas Pekkarinen

The articles in the 2019 Nordic Economic Policy Review analyse how the Nordic countries best can contribute to international climate policy. The articles cover topics such as: How can the Nordics help raise the ambitions in the Paris Agreement? What is the effect of national policy on emissions regulated by the EU Emissions Trading System? Would it be cost-effective for the Nordic countries to pay for emission reductions elsewhere to a larger extent? What role should be played by subsidies to green technology? Should Norway put more emphasis on supply-side policies, that is, on limiting future extraction of oil and gas? Climate change has become a key concern for policy makers, business leaders and individuals all over the world. There exists a broad scientific consensus that the emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide (CO2), are responsible for global warming that, if not halted, could have unacceptable consequences, including catastrophic ones, in at least parts of the world. The main argument used by economists to motivate policy intervention against climate change is that emissions of greenhouse gases that drive global warming are an externality. The benefits of using fossil fuel accrue to the user, whereas the largely negative side effects are born by individuals spread over the globe and over very long time horizons. Since the externality extends across borders, a global collective-action problem arises with incentives for individual countries to free-ride on the climate policies by others. The volume contains five papers with associated comments which were originally presented at a conference in Stockholm on 24 October 2018.

Rapid urbanisation is one of today’s biggest global challenges. Nordic Sustainable Cities is a flagship project under the Nordic Prime Ministers’ initiative Nordic Solutions to Global Challenges that seeks to shed light on this challenge from a Nordic perspective. The White Paper on Nordic Sustainable Cities develops a narrative to describe the “Nordic Sustainable City”. It forms a basis for the knowledge sharing effort that will be carried out by Nordic Innovation, Nordregio’s sister institution under the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2018. This work aims to export Nordic stories as a means of branding the Nordic Region and contributing to global efforts towards urban sustainability. See also a case collection of 54 cases that exemplify a wide range of Nordic sustainable cities

Brownfield redevelopment is an important topic in Europe, where many countries and cities are experiencing rapid urbanisation. It is predicted that by 2020 approximately 80 per cent of Europeans will be living in urban areas, which means that more land in and around urban areas will need to be developed for housing and other purposes. The aim of this brochure is to enable experiences of brownfield redevelopment to be exchanged between the Central Baltic countries (Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Sweden) by providing knowledge about the conditions for brownfield redevelopment in each country. The brochure presents the planning systems and principal legislation and policies related to brownfield redevelopment. It specifically highlights the aforementioned key challenges of cooperation between actors and the remediation of contaminated land, and looks at how domestic legislation and policies promote or hinder meeting those challenges. This brochure is published as part of the Baltic Urban Lab project, which involves four partner cities (Riga, Tallinn, Turku and Norrköping) developing and testing new integrated planning and partnership models for brownfield redevelopment. The partners are aiming to find ways to tackle the various challenges brought about by the development of sites that are often privately owned or have fragmented ownership structures and where the soil is often severely contaminated and thereby requires significant resources for remediation. The planning reviews in the brochure are drafted by Nordregio with valuable expert input from, in particular, the city partners and the associated partner, the Swedish National Board for Housing, Building and Planning.

The Sámi are the only designated indigenous people in the European Union. They retain their own languages and traditions as well as their resource-based livelihoods based on i.e. reindeer herding. Through a series of maps, this paper presents different aspects of the Sámi and Sápmi, like: Traditional living areas, the current and official status of the Sámi and Sámi languages, demographic change in Sápmi and natural resources in Sápmi. Download the folder in other languages: Finnish Norwegian Saami

One of the main deliverables of the RE-GREEN project is now available for reading. The handbook “Public Investment and Procurement for Greener Buildings – a handbook for European decision-makers” can be downloaded here. This handbook is a concise and easy-to-use reference document, providing practical guidance based on the knowledge and experiences developed within the RE-GREEN project. Its focus is on four integrated themes highlighted during the course of our three year work: green public procurement; green buildings; sustainable urban systems; and green governance. The handbook presents information in an interactive way; offering different pathways to explore public investment in green building.

Nordic countries are working to mitigate and adapt to climate change at all levels. Counteracting and coping with climate change is a guiding principle for a wide range of Nordic initiatives. Local authorities are key actors in delivering the EU2020 and national climate targets. This is especially true in the Nordic countries where the responsibilities of the municipalities are quite broad, e.g. in energy production, land use, waste management and procurement. Also for this reason, Nordic municipalities play a key role in the creation of a sustainable and climate-friendly Nordic region. This study gives a general view over local climate work in Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The study is part of the NordLead project, aiming at recognising the success factors and needs for support in Nordic local climate change work. The project is led by Union of the Baltic Cities – Commission on Environment, and is partly funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers. Other partners in the project are Nordregio and associations of local authorities in respective countries.

Innovations is a policy buzz word and used more or less daily within the political debate. Innovations are regarded as fundamental for achieving economic, social and ecological sustainability. This booklet is an introduction guide to the concept, practices and politics of innovations with focus on its relevance for regional development. Innovations are expected to generate new firms and employment opportunities, increased competitiveness, and contribute growth, in Sweden and elsewhere. They are also perceived as crucial for handling climate change, resource scarcity and demographical challenges such as an ageing population and increased migration in Europe. But what is an innovation? How and where are innovations created? And how can regional innovation polices be formulated and implemented in a globalizing world? These are some of the key questions of this booklet, which also highlights concepts such as eco-innovation, social innovations, and smart specialisation. An open and inclusive definition innovations are currently being emphasised as for example in the recently published Swedish Innovation Strategy. Innovations are created by people and generates new values. An innovation can be anything from new technical products or service processes to a significantly improved business models or new forms of organisational and institutional arrangements. This conceptualisation of innovations creates opportunities and challenges policy making. Amongst other things, it implies that regions need position themselves in relation to other regions nationally and internationally, and simultaneously develop context specific innovation strategies and priorities. The booklet offers an introduction to current discourse on innovation by reviewing a selection of essential policy documents from leading international and national organisations such as OECD, EU and Swedish national authorities. It does not offer a new theory on innovation or suggestions on how to innovation policies should be formulated, but it provides an conceptual overview, practical thematic and regional examples on innovations and innovation policies.

Nordregio Contributions to ICASS VII. Insert to Journal of Nordregio 2011:2

Cross-border cooperation in the Nordic countries is strongly anchored in regional and local actors, who have seen a natural need for and benefits from co-operation across the Nordic region’s land and sea borders. The Nordic Working Group on Globalisation and Cross-border cooperation has published a catalogue gathering examples of projects from each of the 11 cross-border committees that receive support from the Nordic Council of Ministers. The projects presented are only a selection of the many cross-border co-operation projects and joint activities that have been implemented with Nordic support over the past three decades. The aim of the catalogue is to provide anyone who is wondering about the benefits of Nordic co-operation with a series of examples of successful initiatives that have produced good results. The aim is also to display the Nordic way of co-operating across borders.

Nordic Council of Ministers, 2011. TemaNord 2011:527. The current pace of global change has already had a decisive impact on the Arctic. To understand the current and likely future situation in the Arctic it is important to acknowledge the pre-conditions, challenges and tendencies at work here. Some of these developments should be characterised as megatrends because they overarch and impact on everything else. They are trends deemed so powerful that they have the potential to transform society across social categories and at all levels, from individuals and local-level players to global structures, and eventually to change our ways of living and thinking.

Samhällsplanering för jämställd trygghet – Fallstudier från Finland, Österrike, Storbritannien och Baltikum. Commisioned by Boverket (Unpublished) Bakgrunden till rapporten Samhällsplanering för jämställd trygghet är att re-geringen i oktober 2008 gav Boverket och länsstyrelserna i uppdrag att stödja ett konkret utvecklingsarbete för att stärka tryggheten i stads- och tätortsmiljöer ur ett jämställdhetsperspektiv. En del i detta arbete har varit att se över kunskapsläget i ämnet. Som ett led i det gav Boverket Nordregio i uppdrag att genomföra en förstudie om olika länders arbete med trygghet i stads- och tät-ortsmiljöer ur ett jämställdhetsperspektiv. Det resulterade i en fortsatt studie av fyra länders arbete. Resultatet presenteras i den här rapporten. Rapporten ger en bild av hur arbetet med trygghet ur ett jämställdhetsperspektiv ser ut utanför Sverige. Den är uppbyggd kring fyra fallstudier, från Finland, Litauen, Storbritannien respektive Österrike. Fallstudierna är relativt fristående från varandra, beroende på att jämställdhets- och planeringssituationen ser olika ut i de olika länderna. Innehållet är intressant på flera vis och har något att ge för flera målgrupper. Både för de som arbetar på teoretiskt nivå men även till samhällsplanerarna ute på fältet. Fallen kan fungera som inspiration för hur det går att arbeta i olika situationer. Det är också intressant att se att det finns olika perspektiv på trygghet, vilket i sin tur påverkar arbetet med trygghet ur ett jämställdhetsperspektiv.