Background
The New Urban Agenda (NUA) was adopted at the United Nations Conference Habitat III in Quito 2016 to guide sustainable urban development. It supports the implementation of the Agenda 2030 from the perspective of cities and communities. The agenda includes a monitoring and reporting obligation, according to which member states report on the achievement of the programme's objectives at regular intervals. The UN member states will prepare their first NUA-related national reports to the UN in 2021. In Finland, the Sustainable City Program (2019-2023) coordinated by the Ministry of the Environment promotes the sustainable development of cities and municipalities with a focus on both environmentally and socially sustainable solutions.
Objectives
The project consists of two complementary phases, in which indicators are selected and developed to describe the environmental, economic and social sustainability of cities.
Reporting on the UN New Urban Development Program (NUA) indicators
The objective of the first phase is to select indicators reflecting the situation of Finnish cities from the indicators of the New Urban Agenda (NUA). Related figures will be produced for the needs of the 2021 national NUA reporting.
National Sustainable Urban Development Indicators
The aim of the second phase is to develop indicators that support the monitoring and promotion of national sustainable urban development. The developed indicators describe the state of the social, economic and environmental dimensions of cities.
Results
As a result of the first phase, SYKE will collect and compile the indicators included in the Finnish national NUA report.
In the second phase, suitable existing and new indicators will be compiled into a presentaton. The end results of the project include a final report, powerpoint presentations and indicator information that can be used in national and international reports.
The beneficiaries of the work are ministries, cities and municipalities, as well as urban developers and decision-makers.
Publications
Ministry of the Environment (2021). Finland's Report on the Implementation of the New Urban Agenda. Ministry of the Environment, Helsinki. Link to the
report: www.urbanagendaplatform.org/sites/default/files/2021-09/Finland%20National%20Report.pdf
Lyytimäki, Jari, Nieminen, Hanna, Finel, Nufar, Nyberg, Elina, Reinikainen, Tapio (2022). Are the Indicators of the New Urban Agenda Failing Us?. Global Policy. Link to the publication: https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13047
Reinikainen, Tapio, Lyytimäki, Jari, Nufar, Finel, Nieminen, Hanna, Nyberg, Elina (2022). Kestävän kaupunkikehityksen indikaattorit: YK:n kaupunkikehitysohjelman ja kestävän kaupunkikehityksen kansallinen seuranta. Ympäristöministeriön julkaisuja 2022:15. Ympäristöministeriö, Helsinki. 102 s. Link to the report: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-361-389-8
The English name of the above-mentioned report: Indicators of sustainable urban development - National monitoring of the UN’s New Urban Agenda and sustainable urban development. The report is in Finnish. Summary in Finnish, English, and Swedish
Events and seminars
All materials only in Finnish
Key indicators for Sustainable Urban Development - report launch event 13.6.2022
Key indicators for Sustainable Urban Development -workshop 17.11.2021
Social Sustainability Indicators -workshop 17.6.2021
Sustainable City Morning Coffee 23.3.2021: How is the city measured?
Further information
Project director, Tapio Reinikainen, Finnish Environment Institute SYKE
Phone + 358 295 251 847, firstname.lastname@syke.fi