The Future Pathways workshop in Helsinki 7 November 2024. © Venni Arra
The Future Pathways workshop for peatlands was held in Nurmes, Helsinki as well as online via Teams on November 7, 2024. The goal of the workshop was to collaboratively identify incentives from both the public and private sectors as well as develop shared understanding between relevant actors in the food system for creating actions and related policy measures to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural peatlands in Finland.
The use of organic soils in food production is a complex and politically driven issue. It can only be addressed through interventions that account for local, regional, and national needs to generate transformative and system-wide change.
"Many successful environmental measures have been the result of farmers' collective action."
The workshop builds on prior workshops held last autumn in Nurmes and this spring in Helsinki as well as interviews conducted in 2023. It brought together stakeholders from the previous workshops, aiming to reach a consensus among food system actors and seek solutions and policy measures that could lead to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural peatlands. Solutions have been developed through multi-stakeholder involvement with co-creation and multi-method approach.
The core stakeholders are farmers and the local community. Food production remains the primary objective of agriculture, yet this does not mean that agriculture cannot pursue additional goals. Many successful environmental measures have been the result of farmers' collective action.
The living lab can support a just transition in agricultural and rural communities towards a low-carbon society by reducing greenhouse emissions from peatlands to mitigate climate change, meanwhile other food system actors can aid farmers and local communities in executing the different measures for agricultural peatlands.
The Future Pathways workshop in Nurmes 7 November 2024. © Ari Paloviita
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