United Nations (UN) has created the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to tackle the grand challenges and guide the sustainable development and business activities globally. The 17 SDGs based on The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, are actually an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.
As forerunners, 25 leading cities and 5 indigenous communities have committed from across all continents, to prove that full SDG implementation by 2025 is possible. UNGSII, UN Global Sustainability Index Institute foundation has been established as an international, multi-stakeholder not-for-profit initiative to support the UN and the implementation of the SDGs, providing reports, analyses and transparency for measuring the performance. The platform has been created as a friendly competition with multiple activities and initiatives supported by SDG experts and industry partners with the common goal of illustrating that SDG implementation results in prosperity and improved quality-of-life for area citizens and business. The cities in the leadership programme undertake to serve as pioneers of sustainable development, engaging their industry, educational institutions and other actor groups including citizens in the efforts. Each city has been appointed to lead at least one of the 17 goals.
City of Espoo was chosen to be the first lead city in implementing the 17 SDGs by 2025 because of its ability to combine entrepreneurial success with environmental and societal excellence. Winning global awards on a regular basis has highlighted the ability of Finland’s second largest city to reinvent itself, providing the best for its citizens and for nature. Espoo’s operations will focus on learning, education and innovation. The UNGSII SCR500 report ranks the largest 500 publicly listed corporations that are today’s most committed companies to individual SDGs and/or the SDGs overall. Once a year these top performers gather in Finland as part of the SDG Champions conference to share best practices. Participants of this year’s SDG Champions Conference including representatives of key companies and impact investors visited Nokia Campus and the LuxTurrim5G pilot environment on Friday June 8th.
Nokia’s role as a forerunner company both in 5G and sustainability was discussed based on presentations by Vesa Kohtamäki, Head of Technology Center Espoo and Pia Tanskanen, Head of Environment. “Nokia has aligned its sustainability strategy and targets with UN SDGs. As an example, for the goal 13, climate action, Nokia has set Science Based targets to reduce its GHG emissions from own operations by 41 % and from product use time operation by 75 % until 2030”, says Pia Tanskanen.
Joint development activities and plans of the LuxTurrim5G ecosystem to build smart and sustainable city were presented by Juha Salmelin, Project Director at Nokia and recent demos & pilots by Pekka Wainio, Research Manager at Nokia Bell Labs. Activities in Espoo will be extended from piloting to real implementations of the smart light poles to provide a network for new digital services. At the same time readiness for scaling up to respond the global needs is prepared.
“LuxTurrim5G ecosystem builds concrete elements for a sustainable smart city contributing strongly especially on the SDGs #9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure; #11 Sustainable cities and communities and #17 Partnerships”, says coordinator of the ecosystem, Markku Heino from Spinverse.
Nokia and the LuxTurrim5G ecosystem partners are closely working with Espoo, as pioneers, to bring the SDGs to practice.
Visit to Connected Zone bus stop
Presentation by Juha Salmelin, Project Director at Nokia