The Nordic Centre Youth have a vision of the Nordic countries being international forerunners in ecology and green technologies - and the visions do not stop there.
We should be passionate of sustainability and also set even more ambiguous goals for Nordic countries. If we think a bit further and set a bit higher goals we could end up thinking that Nordic countries should not only meet United Nations development goals related to ecologically sustainable future, but also utilize all the knowledge for economical opportunities and leave an important green mark in the globe.
In other words, advancement in ecological terms is a good start, as developing and implementing technologies within Nordic countries gives us quite much knowledge for advancing even more. But that will not be enough as long as all the improvement of knowledge has not been utilized in solving the actual ecological problems all around the world. In the end that is what makes all the difference, isn’t it?
The world has a paradoxical problem, as relatively big part of the global knowledge related to sustainable solutions and technologies is concentrated in Nordic countries, meanwhile the major environmental problems are situated in other parts of the world. And in those areas in the world which has the most problems, there are not necessarily enough people with required knowledge working on those issues. Summing these things up together, we can clearly see that there is a big potential for Nordic countries to show up and together make a shift towards greener and healthier globe.
In order to make it real, we should begin think wider and observe all the possible major challenges lying between us and those great opportunities. Definitely one of the biggest challenges in developing and implementing all the new solutions is that doing it will require a lot of funding, which is not too easy to receive, especially as many of the big solutions are actually new, and nobody knows if they work before they are developed and tested. As the investments have big economical risk, there are not too many interested people nor organization willing to invest.
But in order to solve this issue, Nordic countries could end up founding an environmental fund or several environmental funds that would solve this problem by distributing economical investments in those higher risk innovation projects, making sure the success in such an important issue would at least not depend anymore on funding. That for sure is a common interest within Nordic countries.
Juho Kekäläinen
First Vice President
Nordiska Centerungdomens Förbund