30th EEAC Annual conference, Helsinki, 14 – 15 September 2022

This year, the EEAC Annual Conference – entitled: The Critical Decade of Action: Mobilising Sustainability Transformation in Europe took place in Helsinki on September 14th and 15th 2022. The conference was hosted by Finland’s three independent science panels, the Finnish Expert Panel for Sustainable Development, the Finnish Climate Change Panel and the Finnish Nature Panel.

Anniversary Conference

The EEAC Network has been connecting councils and expert panels across Europe for 30 years. This year’s 30th celebration offered an opportunity to reflect on the past years, but more importantly to evaluate critically how we can leap to a sustainable future.

The critical decade

The critical decade for taking a leap to a sustainable future in Europe has started. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, its national implementation roadmaps as well as European Green Deal initiatives are all aiming to accelerate sustainability and climate targets by 2030. The most critical questions for this decade are how do we act now to guarantee that planetary boundaries are respected in economic and other societal action? How can we carry out sustainability transformation within boundaries that are defined by a safe and just space both ecologically as well as socially?

Conference set-up

The two-day conference brought together experts from academia, civil society, the private sector and government to discuss the next steps for facilitating the much-needed transformation in the critical decade of action. We heared interesting keynote speeches and engaged in workshops and parallel sessions, including on the following themes:

Joining forces for sustainability transformation
Europe’s global responsibility in combating climate change
Mid-term policy actions needed against the biodiversity crisis

Programme, Recordings & Presentations

Parts of the Conference were also virtually virtually from Helsinki.

The Programme and the Speaker biographies.

Impression of the 30th EEAC Annual Conference:

Recordings of the plenary sessions, day I:

Opening:

Joining forces for Sustainability Transformation:

Europe’s global responsibility in combating climate change & PowerPoint

PowerPoint Presentation Parallel Sessions 1, 2, 3:

PowerPoint Presentation Parallel Sessions 4, 5, 6:

Recordings of the plenary sessions, day II:

Speech by the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Maria Ohisalo and presentation by Professor Paula Eerola, President, Academy of Finland: