This project focuses on how urban governments and social stakeholders in China’s cities engage with major environmental risks and how they tackle the long overdue transition towards cities becoming more green, liveable and sustainable. The research findings will be published in 2017 as: "China’s Emerging Green Urban Governance - Tackling environmental and sustainability challenges at the city level" Editors: Jørgen Delman, Yuan Ren, Outi Luova, Mattias Burell, Oscar Almén

Team

Jörgen Delman, Oscar Almén, Mattias Burell, Ren Yuan

The PRASDES Project develops sustainable services in the four participating National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) in the following five areas: 1. Weather, climate and hydrology data management systems 2. Climate and Water services production systems 3. Hydrological services production systems 4. Information and Communication systems 5. Financial sustainability of services

Team

The primary aim of the project is climate change mitigation and reduced deforestation through the provision of low cost water purification technologies to the rural poor. At the same time, the project will sustainably scale up, through carbon finance, the production and dissemination of low-cost clean water treatment solutions to poor households in Cambodia and Lao PDR. The local supply chains of the two carbon projects by Hydrologic Social Enterprise and Terra Clear will be strengthened and the projects will be developed into Gold Standard projects for voluntary carbon markets (VCM). Targeted customers are rural households who currently have no or only a partial access to clean water. Ceramic water purifiers are able to provide a number of co benefits to end users (including the adaptive capacity of end users to climate change) and throughout the supply chain. The project aims to ensure these co-benefits are also realised. The scaling up and sustainable mass dissemination activities will be complemented by a research report prepared by Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC).

Team

FFRC-Jyrki Luukkanen, Kamilla Karhunmaa, Visa Tuominen, Outi Pitkänen Nexus- Jo Hazelwood Hydrologic- Rachel Pringle TerraClear- Nathan Cole

The project will aim to enhance the capacity of partner HEIs to be more responsive to labour market needs and increase the capability of partner HEIs to contribute to the respective national plans and regional co-operation in energy efficiency, access and sustainability. The project will employ a “training of trainers” approach, targeting academic staff, PhD Students and administrative staff in management and finance in order to facilitate increased capacities in curricula development particularly for the BSc and MSc programmes offered by the partner HEIs. Trainings will focus on i) energy efficiency (modelling, renewable energy technical efficiency, system level efficiency) and ii) energy access (pricing in the Caribbean context and governance issues).

Team

Jyrki Luukkanen, Mika Korkeakoski, Timo Nurmi

With the proliferation of electronic devices and the perceived obsolesce culture of consuming electronics, it has become important to study not only the current practices involved in the management of the resultant electronic waste (e-waste), but also how e-waste is interacted with in different cultures. As such, this research aims to understand the different factors (cultural and economic)influencing of e-waste management in Nigeria and in Finland.

Team

Dr. Sakari Taipale

The main objectives of the cooperation are: • to develop a study module and associated curriculum on sustainability and clean technologies • to design and implement staff/expert training for sustainability and clean technologies • to develop UEM capacity to provide services for and to establish strong links with industry, national sustainable development efforts and initiatives and other HEIs in the field of sustainability and clean technologies

Team

Prof. Andrade Egas, Dr. Natasha Ribeiro, MSc. (Tech.) Mikko Martikka, MSc. (Tech.) Sakari Toivakainen,

This project will reinforce the Finnish development objectives of evolving towards a more inclusive green economy and sustainability. Also in line with the objectives of Finnish development cooperation, our project will directly contribute to the achievement of some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are strongly supported by the Government of Venezuela. In case of environmental sustainability (MDG 7), this project will support the improvement in the competencies of future foresters, as well as the raised awareness on environmental issues among people. This will have an impact on a better management of forests and therefore a possible reduction of deforestation rates.

Team

Sari Pitkänen, Osvaldo Encinas, Javier Arevalo Pardo de Donlebun, Calkin Suero Montero, Jarkko Suhonen