Engaging the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 in strategic governance of “Europe’s most sustainable city”

In the face of the climate crisis, cities have committed to ambitious sustainability targets. The UN Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a globally shared language for decision-makers and policymakers regarding their sustainability objectives. Espoo, Finland’s second-largest city, has become a pioneer in implementing the Agenda, not least due to its recent nomination as ‘Europe’s most sustainable city’. This article investigates the use of the Agenda in strategic governance in Espoo with the aim to identify challenges and opportunities of SDG localisation. Although the Agenda has affected many aspects of policymaking in Espoo and ambitions have been high to shine as an SDG pioneer, a systematic integration of sustainability concerns into policymaking is not yet achieved. Moreover, there is a need to question the reliance of the Agenda framework on the ecological modernisation paradigm, which does not see economic growth and ecological sustainability at odds.


Introduction
Mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss will require major societal changes during the next decades.Nations and cities are committed to ambitious climate actions, but the envisioned solutions require long-term commitment and cooperation between the different sectors of society and levels of government.
One key problem arises from conflicts between different interest groups as well as the challenge to combine economic and social viewpoints with ecological targets.The challenges and solutions of sustainable development culminate strongly in cities, which are home to a significant proportion of the world's population, produce most of the emissions and wastes, but also represent a breeding ground for urban solutions and innovations that make it possible to meet these challenges.This puts local governments in a remarkable position in the strive for climate targets.
Consequently, city governments are central actors in implementing the UN Agenda 2030.Notwithstanding the critique on the sufficiency of the paradigmatic approach behind the Agenda to sustainable development, the Agenda 2030 represents a globally ratified overarching guideline for managing sustainable development, and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become a common reference point regarding sustainability for governments, businesses, and citizens.To date, the focus of the Agenda 2030 has rather been on national governments and their contribution to the SDGs.While the role of cities and local governments in the implementation of the Agenda 2030 is increasingly acknowledged (Johnson 2018;Valencia et al. 2019;Bilsky et al. 2021;Croese et al. 2021), the available studies do not elaborate on how the implementation of the SDGs should be organised (Sachs et al. 2019;Biermann et al. 2022).The impact of SDGs in both local and global governance has mainly been found to be discursive, affecting how actors understand and communicate about sustainable development, while insights about larger institutional impacts such as legislative actions or resource allocations have remained sparse (Biermann et al. 2022).In the face of climate and biodiversity loss crises and a lack of successful examples, it is crucial to gain experiences from cities pioneering in the implementation of the Agenda to understand both the impact and challenges of SDG localisation.
To address this empirical gap, in this article, we use expert interviews to study the Finnish city of Espoo and its sustainability attempts against the background of the ecological modernisation paradigm.Espoo has been identified as exceptionally successful and actively engaged in achieving the goals of the Agenda.Through the case of Espoo, we examine what it means to be a sustainable development pioneer at the level of local government, through what kind of strategy and policy measures the SDGs are addressed, how sustainable development is understood in the city, and what challenges and opportunities can be identified.
In Finland, a majority of the Agenda's goals belong, as regards their implementation, to the realm of the local governments.Therefore, concentrating especially on the local level when examining governance responses to the Agenda is worthwhile in Finland.Our findings based on the Finnish case are immediately relevant to other countries in which the local level enjoys a relatively high degree of governmental autonomy, such as the Scandinavian countries.Moreover, as the empowerment of local governance is identified as a goal within the Agenda, better knowledge about the opportunities and struggles faced by cities in dual crises is imperative to make use of the full capacity of cities.
In this article, we first introduce the concept of ecological modernisation, present the Agenda 2030 framework, and describe the spatial and administrative context of the city of Espoo.Subsequently, we will showcase the main results of the expert interviews and discuss them against the ecological modernisation paradigm.Lastly, we present concluding remarks and suggestions for further research.

The concept and its implementation
There have been several terms to describe the desired development: green economy, sustainable growth, and circular economy.They recognise environmental challenges but are all based on the idea of continuous economic growth.They could all be put under the ecological modernisation (EM) paradigm, which has been used to describe a technology-based and innovation-oriented or market-oriented approach to environmental policy, i.e. the pursuit of prosperity and economic growth within the limits of ecological carrying capacity and environmental well-being.The paradigm of EM builds on the assumption that environmental problems are caused by institutionalised failures of industrial society, and the corresponding assumption that they can be controlled by means of existing political, economic, and social institutions and solutions (Jokinen 2000;Jänicke 2000).
Currently, EM is pursued mainly through the development of 'green' technologies, legislative reforms, and governmental steering of the markets by taxes and incentives (Naess and Moberg 2021).Unlike sustainable development as a normative ideal and goal, EM embodies the change process itself.Ecological Modernisation school of thought originates from a few Western European countries (Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom) and studies have been carried out especially focusing on the Nordic, European and OECD countries (Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000).EM has therefore been used primarily to analyse how industrialised societies deal with environmental crises (Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000).
Modernisation describes the industry's continuous effort to make its operations more efficient through technological innovations.In ecological modernisation, this process is politically guided by considering ecological values and goals.Environmental innovations, if compared with other innovations, typically need political (or at least organised societal) support due to market failure.Therefore, EM is essentially a political concept (Jänicke 2008).
Several divisions have been used to describe the implementation of EM.The first is so-called decoupling.In relative decoupling, the growth of the harmful effects on the environment is slower than the growth of the economic benefits.Therefore, the goal is to enable economic growth while not worsening the environmental situation as much.In absolute decoupling, in turn, environmental harms are reduced regardless of economic growth, so the main goal is to improve the environmental situation.
According to Huber (2000), the realisation of EM takes place through two processes: the ecologicalisation of the economy and the economicalisation of ecology.In the ecologicalisation of the economy, ecological values, such as sustainable development, are considered as part of economic values.In the economicalisation of ecology, on the other hand, economic values are brought into the examination of nature, for example, by giving nature an independent (also monetary) value in economic decision-making (Huber 2000;Tirkkonen 2000, p. 31).In both processes, ecological aspects are perceived to be treatable in an equal way alongside the economic ones, and thus EM generally does not question the idea of continuous economic growth.Christoff (1996) identifies two lines of EM thought, strong and weak.He associates weak ecological modernisation with emphatically thinking only about economic development, relying on technology companies to create environmentally friendly solutions, and enacting policies whose effects are only national and in which the decision-making process is mainly on the shoulders of one institution.In strong ecological modernisation, on the other hand, it is thought that the environmental aspect comes even before the economy, and trust in the technological innovations of the business world alone is not seen as sufficient, but instead, a systemic change in operating methods is needed.In addition, numerous different actors are held necessary to be involved in decisionmaking processes (Christoff 1996).Howes et al. (2010) expand the classification between weak and strong EM and elaborate on the role of the state as a promoter of the EM of society.In weak EM, the state's role is minimal, and state policies are mainly aimed at facilitating the market and disseminating information on environmental issues.In strong EM, the state takes a clear and goal-oriented role, which includes the reorganisation of institutions, as well as reforms related to environmental legislation and the economy.Here, however, the strong role of the state must not mean the disappearance of the deliberative democratic process, which is deemed necessary.Therefore, it is the role of the state to maintain an open dialogue with its citizens (Howes et al. 2010).
In Finland, the transition to a green economy has been set as a condition for the realisation of EM and ecological restructuring.There is no unequivocal definition of the green economy, but in a report commissioned by the Finnish Ministry of the Environment (Antikainen et al. 2013), it is described as an economic system that supports ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable well-being.Switching to this system is said to be possible with economic decoupling, where economic benefit and environmental harm are separated.Despite the controversy of this idea, the Ministry of the Environment gave top priority to the green transition as the basis of economic growth in its strategy in 2022.(see Ministry of the Environment 2022) Even though EM and its parallel meanings have become the mainstream approach to sustainable development in Finland and the rest of the Western world, it has also faced criticism.

Criticism and alternatives
A common criticism of EM is that it does not oppose or reject neoliberalism and the goals of economic growth.Instead, environmental problems are considered solvable with the current institutional structures without a need to abandon capitalism and industrialism.In contrast to ideologies such as radical environmentalism (Cianchi 2015;Taylor 2008) or even more radical eco-centrist ecologism (Mol and Spaargaren 2000), economic growth and solutions to environmental problems are seen as compatible in the EM discourse (Jänicke 2000;Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000;Tirkkonen 2000).Since the 1980s, the Greens have emerged as a political movement to push a more radical policy based on environmental protection and ecological values (Carter 2013) although they have more and more abandoned radicalism and taken on the guise of environmentalism in just seeking a cleaner service economy with cleaner technology (Mol and Spaargaren 2000).As the pressure has grown to take a position in politics on environmental issues, the traditional parties have adopted a way of thinking based on EM that better supports their traditional economy-centric politics (Carter 2013).
Despite some favourable framework conditions, the strategy of EM clearly has several inherent limitations.Jänicke (2008) raises the unavailability of marketable technological solutions for relevant environmental problems like the loss of species, the rebound effect as well as resistance by `modernisation losers`.In addition, economic growth tends to repeal environmental improvements, if the eco-efficiency increases less than the market growth (relative decoupling), if the environmental innovations are restricted to niche markets, or if the innovation addresses merely the symptoms, not the causes.Against this background, Jänicke states that structural solutions seem indispensable.Eco-innovations should be supported by transition management or ecological structural policy (Jänicke 2008).Jorgenson and Clark (2012) also highlight that relative decoupling still indicates an overall increase in total carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere and, as a result, does not diminish the ecological challenge.They criticise the whole EM approach for ignoring structures of international trade and its influence on emissions and economic development relationships (Jorgenson and Clark 2012).For instance, manufacturing might be transferred from more developed to less developed countries, relocating emissions but reducing neither consumption nor emissions.Weak ecological modernisation has the same foundational approach as relative decoupling, although the first one has more to do with political choices and the second with technical definitions of the phenomena.
As discussed above, EM is putting faith in human innovativeness and technological progress that would be capable of decoupling economic and material growth from negative environmental consequences, as natural resources are perceived to be substitutable.It has been questioned from both the social and the ecological side, whether the paradigm has the capability to meet the alarming challenges of global wellbeing, climate change, and biodiversity loss.It has been claimed already in the 1970s, that stronger sustainability actions are urgently needed, and indeed a paradigm shift towards the limits to growth approach (Meadows et al. 1972;Hirsch 1976;Daly 1977).It means that rather than settling for efficiency gains and relative improvements, we need to think in terms of absolute limits to material development and absolute reduction of our negative impact on both nature and climate, especially in affluent countries (Naess and Moberg 2021).`Many have known for a long time that population growth and rising production and consumption cannot be sustained forever in a finite world` (Tinbergen and Hueting 1991, p. 38).An alternative practical point of view suggests reductions to be made to the gross national product (GNP), so as to measure economic growth, e.g. the monetary value of the waste and pollution generated in the production, and the natural capital it destroys.The discussion about the limits to growth would disappear because GNP adjusted in this way could not grow in an economy that excessively consumes natural capital or produces externalities (Ekins 1993).Another question, which is impossible to answer by technology only, concerns social sustainability problems, such as equality, poverty, and health.
There are also contradictory studies concerning the assumptions behind EM.Traditionally, it is based on the hypothesis that production processes are increasingly designed and conducted using ecological criteria.Also, it has been suggested that EM is facilitated by processes of globalisation (Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000).In Finland, Jokinen (2000) found that even though the discourses have changed after the EU membership and regulation, national institutional arrangements and practices might have changed only marginally.Evidence also suggests that when conflicts arise, economic profits tend to win over ecological concerns, and the economic elite is increasingly dominating all aspects of society and the environment (Pellow et al. 2000).

UN Agenda 2030
The Agenda 2030 represents a global transnational commitment to sustainable development, under the wing of the United Nations (UN), which responds to the need for coordinated and efficient actions addressing climate change, nature loss and social inequality.The UN Agenda 2030 is the most commonly used and widely accepted framework of sustainability.Agreed by the UN member states in 2015, it is an action programme that introduces goals related to sustainable development which apply to all countries of the world.Its overarching aim is to eliminate extreme poverty and secure people's well-being and economic growth, considering the earth's carrying capacity and resources and avoiding environmental degradation The United Nations (2021).
The Agenda contains 17 goals (Sustainable Development Goals, SDG), under which there are a total of 169 more detailed sub-goals.The realisation of the goals is monitored with the help of 200 global indicators, and many states have also made their own measures (Ciambra et al. 2023).The nation-states have the primary responsibility for implementing and achieving the SDGs, but the importance of involving other sectors of society is also recognised.Other levels of government, such as municipalities and cities, can also commit to the Agenda in their operations, and highlight their progress through voluntary reporting (Voluntary Local Review, VLR).Despite the global commitments to the Agenda and the SDGs, the achievement of the Agenda's objectives in practice has been slow, and reporting is voluntary to all actors.
Compared to other previous commitments and climate agreements such as Rio 1992 and Paris 2015 the Agenda emphasises the interdependence of goals, i.e. that when promoting certain goals, the effects of measures on other goals must be considered and that environmental, social and economic sustainability must be considered together.For example, high employment strengthens the social foundation and people's well-being, but jobs should still not be created in industries that harm the environment (Prime Minister's Office 2023).
The Agenda is also built on the idea of multiscalarity, i.e. that implementation needs to take place at different levels of government.Especially cities and local authorities are ascribed a crucial role in promoting sustainable development generally and the Agenda 2030 specifically because, as local governments, they are close to residents and other actors in society.The planning and implementation of actions related to the SDGs are thus often done on the local level and referred to as SDG localisation (Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments 2016; Kanuri et al. 2016;United Cities and Local Governments 2021).
SDG localisation comprises the adaptation of the SDGs to the local context, implementation of concrete measures, and monitoring through international and locally developed indicators (Kanuri et al. 2016).Investigating SDG localisation reveals political choices which determine the understanding of sustainability and the underlying assumptions of how it can be achieved.The discourse on SDG localisation also acknowledges the constraints that local actors face in working with the SDGs, such as limited political and fiscal power, limited personnel resources and know-how, lack of access to financial instruments or low levels of institutional capacity (Kanuri et al. 2016).
In addition to these practical challenges, there are still knowledge gaps regarding the localisation of the SDGs in the urban context, for example related to the role of leadership, the access to finances of local authorities and the monitoring of results (Jones and Comfort 2020;Ciambra et al. 2023;Purkarthofer et al. 2024).Understanding how local authorities work with the SDGs, how they adapt them to their local context and how they implement concrete actions is of paramount importance to understand the impact of the global Agenda 2030.This is even more crucial in the Nordic countries, where local authorities typically enjoy a high degree of independence resulting in many competencies and responsibilities, ranging from being able to determine land uses, to levying taxes and providing services for citizens, including education and health care.Consequently, in Finland, the majority of the SDGs belong, as regards their implementation, to the realm of the local governments.SDG localisation is, however, globally relevant, not least because strong local government is presented as a requirement for good governance in the Agenda itself.
The Agenda 2030 has been criticised for its reliance on the EM paradigm.Kaika (2017) is doubtful of the alleged `paradigm shift` of the Agenda.In her view, the call for `safe, resilient, sustainable and inclusive cities` (SDG11) remains path dependent on old methodological tools (e.g.indicators), techno-managerial solutions (e.g.smart cities), and institutional frameworks of the prevailing EM paradigm that has been deemed insufficient in the face of environmental challenges.

Espoo: the most sustainable city in Europe?
In 2018, the UN invited the Finnish City of Espoo to be a pioneer city of the Agenda 2030.This is partly due to a comparative study that was conducted by the Telos Institute of Dutch Tilburg University in 2016 (Zoeteman et al. 2016.), which identified Espoo as the most sustainable city in Europe.Espoo did not commission this study itself, but the city was selected by Telos Institute independently as part of several European cities to be compared with Dutch cities.Other Nordic cities did also well in the study: Stockholm came second, Copenhagen fourth, Helsinki seventh, and Tampere eighth.The publication of the study encouraged Espoo to integrate the SDGs into its city strategy, publish VLRs, and commit to achieving the goals of the Agenda by 2025.
Espoo is a city of approx.300 000 inhabitants on the southern coast of Finland, located to the west of the capital city of Helsinki.The municipality covers an area of 528 km 2 and is characterised by a big variety in population density, with more urbanised areas in the south and sparsely populated areas and forests in the North.It belongs to the Capital Region of four cities: Helsinki (population 660 000), Espoo, Vantaa (population 240 000), and Kauniainen (population 10 300).In terms of population, Espoo is Finland's second-largest city, but it has reached this status only recently, having been, since the 1950s, alongside Vantaa, the most rapidly growing municipality in Finland, absorbing the expansive growth of the city of Helsinki.Between 1950 and 2000, the municipality's population grew tenfold, from 22 000 to 210 000, receiving the status of city in 1972.Especially in the suburbanisation period of 1950-1970, the municipality's growth was extensive, and its resources for planning and infrastructure investment could not meet the demand.In that era, major building companies took over suburban planning and development.They purchased large areas of private farmland for housing development, agreeing with the municipality on the zoning outlines, and on the construction of streets and parks around apartment buildings, their technical infrastructure, and, to a degree, also public service buildings, in exchange for the municipality agreeing to ratify enough housing floorspace in the area plan.Such land-use agreement procedures were introduced in Finnish planning legislation only in 1999.In Espoo, this de facto developer-led land-use policy resulted in an `archipelago` of larger and smaller urban centres located several kilometres apart from each other.
Alongside Espoo, such developer-led land-use agreements were in that era common in Vantaa, too, troubled with similar growth pressures.However, whereas Vantaa has since moved towards more planled development, developer-led planning is still strikingly common in Espoo, despite its well-resourced technical service and planning units.One reason for this is the difference in the political leadership of the cities.While in Vantaa, the dominant party has been the Social Democratic Party, more inclined to promote public steering and welfarist policies, in Espoo, the right-wing National Coalition Party has been the largest, with its relative liberalist tones -reflected also in positive political attitudes towards landowners' and developers' planning initiatives and avoidance of limitations to private car use.Tellingly, the first comprehensive plan, the master land-use plan of southern parts of Espoo, was ratified only in 2008, after 40 years of preparation.
As `new` cities, the conditions for firmer municipality-led land-use policy have also otherwise been more challenging for Espoo and Vantaa than for the `old` city of Helsinki.Whereas Helsinki was established as a city by the Swedish King in 1550, thereby receiving socalled crown land for developing its initial territory, alongside other cities established during the Swedish era, the younger cities and rural municipalities have not been provided with such land assets.Thereby the latter have had more difficulties in establishing an active land-use policy of making plans for municipally owned land.Only recently (2012) Vantaa added to its land policy toolkit the option of expropriating private land for planning purposes (Koivistoinen 2016), while in Espoo it is not uncommon that the city reserves even its own land areas for developers' planning proposals (Mäntysalo et al. 2016).
In this light, it seems curious that the City of Espoo was nominated as the most sustainable city in Europe in 2015.This nomination surprised both Espoo's decision-makers and administrators, but also researchers scrutinising sustainability, since Espoo has been perceived as an American-style car city, not a pioneer of sustainable development (Hertell 2018).According to the study conducted by Telos, Espoo has economically, socio-culturally, and ecologically managed to keep its growth sustainable, despite the high pace of growth (recently approx.2% per year, until the pandemic) (Zoeteman et al. 2016).In total, 86 different indicators from all sectors of sustainability were used in the comparison.In the study, Espoo's strengths were found especially in the high level of education and income, and the residents' perceived security and access to nature.Among Espoo's attractiveness factors, versatile sports and cultural services were also noted.
Concerning the sustainability of Espoo's growth in terms of land use and transport, indeed positive developments have taken place during the last ten years.The city has concentrated on developing its archipelago-like urban structure, with a vision of a networked polycentric urban structure, consisting of five main urban centres, interconnected by a railbased public transportation network.On the other hand, there are still more controversial plans in Espoo too, such as the plan for a whole new housing area of Hista near the Nuuksio national park, completely isolated from the existing urban structure, in expectation to be connected to the rest of the city and Helsinki with a future regional rail connection.
From the perspective of a functional urban system, Espoo is an organic part of the larger Capital Region and even broader Helsinki Region, including the outer band of towns and cities.City-regional collaboration in land use and transport planning has been difficult to achieve, though.As regards land use, zero-sum competition between the municipalities over well-todo residents, jobs, and investments has been common.In city-regional transport system planning, though, the results have been somewhat encouraging.This is largely due to an agreement policy initiated by the state, committing the municipalities to subsidised housing policy measures in exchange for the state's transport infrastructure investments (Granqvist et al. 2019;Duman et al. 2022).
Examining Espoo's sustainability indicators in isolation from the broader context of the Helsinki Region is the core bias of the city ranking exercise of the Telos Institute.From a broader city-regional viewpoint, Espoo's relatively less favourable share of sustainable modes of mobility in the city region would have become evident, as well as the relativity of Espoo's high income and education levels.In a broader scan, they can also be seen as indicative of city-regional segregation, to which Espoo's loose land-use policy, favouring detached and semi-detached housing and shopping centres, attractive to well-educated and wealthy families, has contributed.The relocation of the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK) from Helsinki to Espoo in 1955-1965 has further contributed to Espoo's attractiveness as a domicile for the highly educated.Such attractiveness has been further strengthened since 2010, when TKK and two smaller Helsinki-based universities merged to form Aalto University.The campus, with Aalto University collaborating with numerous high-tech industries and the National Technological Research Centre VTT nearby, has become a fertile environment for generating start-ups.The annual event in Helsinki, Slush, which Aalto University has helped to establish, has become a world-leading start-up event, bringing together thousands of innovators and investors around the world.
Having such an active start-up community was an important factor for Espoo receiving yet another flattering nomination in 2018: Intelligent Community of the Year, by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF).According to ICF, Espoo deserved its top-ranking position due to making technologies a cornerstone of life and work in the city, including contributions to education and technology sectors, public broadband services, and public-private training programmes for the unemployed (YLE News 9.6.2018).

Espoo strategy and governance
Since the City Council term 2013-2017, the City of Espoo has adopted a policy of crystallising its strategy into a story format.The `Espoo Story`, updated each council term, includes the vision, values, and operating principles of the city, as well as the goals for the current council term.It guides the city's operations and development, to be implemented with annually set performance targets, sector-level stories, performance unit-level goals, and cross-sectoral development programmes.
Initially, five cross-sectoral development programmes were established with their own programme management, one of them being Sustainable Espoo (Hertell 2018).The sustainable development programme has continued over the three last council terms, while the other programmes have changed.For the implementation of each development programme and its goals, several cross-sectoral projects have been carried out.
In Espoo's current strategy work, Agenda 2030 is adopted as a tool.The Agenda's SDGs are translated into the Espoo Story as its integral elements, and references to them are also made in the crosssectoral development programmes, as well as the sectoral policies.Each sector translates the SDGs in a bottom-up fashion in its own legal-administratively regulated purposive action.Through this incorporation of the SDGs in the city's governance apparatus, the SDGs are attempted to be approached systemically as an intertwined whole.

Research methods
This article builds on interviews with twelve experts, local politicians, and managers from the City of Espoo and various stakeholder organisations.The interviewees included two local councillors from leading parties in the City Council (National Coalition Party and The Greens), the mayor and a programme manager from the mayor's office, three sectoral administrators or specialists (technical & environment and cultural & learning sectors), and, outside the city organisation, two representatives of Aalto University (domicile in Espoo), a representative of an Espoo-based software technology start-up, an official from the National Council of State, and an official from the EU Committee of the Regions.The interviewees were selected through discretionary sampling among such persons who had participated in Espoo's Agenda 2030 or strategy work (inside the city organisation or as a stakeholder) and thus could provide valuable information on the phenomena under investigation.When selecting the interviewees, due attention was paid to including actors with different perspectives, party affiliations, and working roles at various organisational levels, to explore differences in views and individual approaches around the phenomena.As the Agenda 2030 is a local, national, and global framework and Espoo is an active participant in both national and EU-level conversations, all levels of governance were reflected in the interviews.
The thematic interviews were held in April-June 2021.In the restricted conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the interviews were conducted via Teams, except one, which was an email interview.The outline of the interview questions was sent to the interviewees in advance so that they could familiarise themselves with the topics to be discussed.Due to the different roles and backgrounds of the interviewees, the thematic outline of the interview varied slightly, and the questions were also refined during the interviews, in response to each interviewee's specific experience and expertise.The interview setting was semi-structured: the order of topics and questions asked varied so that the conversation became natural, and the interviewee could tell things at their own pace, while still answering all the main questions.The recorded interviews were transcribed, and their length varied between 41 and 94 minutes, with an average length of 51 minutes.
The interviews focused on the Agenda 2030 goals and their role and perceived importance for the city of Espoo.In addition, the interviewees' perceptions of the significance of the city's pioneer role in Agenda work, and related demands, were asked.Since the interview study was inductive, determining saturation was not a significant factor in the reliability assessment.The reliability of the perceived saturation increases if the material is searched for similarities and not differences, which was not the main goal in this case.Here the aim was to find out how different actors perceived the implementation of the Agenda's goals in Espoo, and what needs for development they saw in this regard.Each new interviewee offered new perspectives, but it was decided to end the interviews when a sufficient overall picture began to emerge clearly from the material and when all key stakeholders had been interviewed.
For the researcher's preconceptions or interpretations to affect the results as little as possible, the transcribed material was processed as a whole for as long as possible, during which the expressions of the interviewees remained complete and, in their context, working in Word.The transcripts were condensed and divided for examination under the unifying themes emerging from the material.With the help of notes taken by the researcher, the material was thematised at the very end, i.e. regrouped in different subject areas according to similarities and differences.In this way, a clear picture of the investigated situation was formed in the words of the interviewees, based on which the results were written and evaluated in relation to the theory.

Results: engaging the UN Agenda 2030 in the strategic governance of Espoo
Overall, the interview study painted a fairly consistent picture of the challenges and opportunities of sustainable development in Espoo with only minor disagreements voiced by the interviewees.First and foremost, with the work of sustainable development and the commitment to the Agenda, a very clear and logical development path can be seen in Espoo, and the role of long-serving city leaders is central to it.According to his own words, the Mayor of Espoo had already assessed when taking office in 2011 that if the city were economically, socially, ecologically, and culturally sustainable, it would be a `reasonably good city`.This holistic view of sustainability was set as a goal already in the first story-based city strategy in 2013, and the work has purposefully continued since.All the councillors and administrators interviewed inside the city saw this sustainability approach as a fertile ground for the Agenda work to take root later.
According to all interviewees, the Agenda is not seen as an end in itself, or as an externally posed imperative.Instead, it is considered a resource in generating internal and external collaboration, offering legitimate backing to the direction chosen, and shedding `nobler` light to important local governance functions, thereby also connecting issues and actors.All cities want to be vibrant and attract people and companies to their territory, preferably innovative and active.Although nature has always been a central element in the Finnish culture, and accordingly cherished by Espoo's decision-makers, the innovation economy, business development, and job creation have been seen as an even greater necessity.However, the interviewees saw that the global discourse has fostered the realisation of how big a threat climate change is, and how big the implied financial costs are.According to the interviewees in central management roles, the conception has gradually matured that nature is also a basic condition for economic growth, and that combating climate change has also great potential for liveability and business life.This aligns with the premise of the Agenda 2030 to combine different sustainability sectors and, as a globally legitimate framework approved by all nations, the Agenda adds credibility to gain wide support for cross-cutting sustainable development work in Espoo.
According to the interviewees, well-rounded sustainable development work requires networked and integrative leadership and clear changes in thinking and working practices, but it is also seen to bring benefits and facilitate collaboration with different stakeholders.The Agenda was viewed as a particularly useful framework for cities, as cities play such a critical role in sustainable development.An official working in the Committee of the Regions stated that cities produce 70% of the world's greenhouse emissions and, respectively, local governments are responsible for approximately 70% of climate change mitigation measures and up to 90% of adaptation measures.Also, according to the Prime Minister's Office, about 70% of the Agenda's goals are seen to be directly related to the local level, as they are related to activities such as education, culture, infrastructure, and nature conservation, which municipalities are responsible for in Finland.On the other hand, in Espoo, both the councillors and administrators had recognised, for example, that the city organisation is responsible for only about 10% of the emissions in the whole city territory; the rest is caused by all companies, residents, and other organisations operating in the area.
Consequently, close cooperation with the entire urban ecosystem was largely seen as a necessity to promote the SDGs.With the contemporary sustainability challenges, city leadership is no longer viewed as a chain of command system, but the whole idea of city leadership is seen to need reconsideration.This implies increasing collaboration across boundaries with different stakeholders, who have different interests and ways of operating.Many interviewees saw the Agenda as a useful tool for initiating new operations, strategies, and cooperation.
In her research, Hölscher (2019) identifies climate change above all as a transition challenge that highlights the role of synergies and compromises, and social learning, instead of concentrating on each individual goal separately.In Espoo, the different SDGs were recognised, among the interviewees in the city government, to have several mutual connection points.Hence, a strategic insight was broadly shared that the best results would be achieved if the SDGs were embedded systemically as an interlaced whole, for example by connecting investments in active mobility (walking and cycling) to savings in health services.
The city's long-serving councillors recalled that, for a long time in the last century, various reports and speeches had made references to similar sustainability measures and actions, which, however, had lacked breakthrough potential in multi-level administration.At the right time, the SDGs offered a suitable common umbrella that helped bring the work forward.Sustainable development, and especially packaging it in the form of SDGs, was seen to make sustainability actionable and to facilitate better comprehension of the entire life cycle of a given project or investment.Minimising construction costs in a building or infrastructure project was no longer seen as feasible if it would mean higher ecological strain or maintenance costs in the long term.Thereby more farsighted perspectives were adopted.Many of the interviewees held that strategy work ought to be more attentive to the broader whole at the level of change phenomena.In view of how ecological, economic, social, and cultural facets of sustainability are brought together, more changes and understanding were still seen as necessary, to bring systemic coherence at the levels of both practical action and strategic leadership.However, it was also acknowledged that profound change and broadening of views are very challenging in practice.
The mayor saw environmental discourse in Finland generally and in Espoo specifically being transformed from the initial nature protection focus to a broader carbon neutrality work, and lately further to ecological carbon handprint work, a concept referring to positive actions towards climate change mitigation.Reporting of the Agenda-related actions was perceived to be instrumental in promoting collaboration, and helpful in making the sustainable development work more visible and connected to global action.
It should be noted, though, that in Espoo, sustainable development is, first and foremost, seen through business, brand value, and innovativeness that would enable the generation of green jobs, enterprises, and liveability.Thereby work on sustainable development is seen to align with aims to foster the city's global competitiveness.Most interviewees saw this EMbased reality as a distinctively good and desirable trend, but some hoped for bolder environment-based values.The focus nevertheless is on partnerships with key local actors, engaging in shared strategic storytelling and inviting participation, with the city leaders acting as catalysts and enablers, thereby generating value for public governance.
Globally, businesses are also increasingly incentivised, through legislative and financial changes, to adopt the SDGs to remain competitive.In the city of Espoo, it is seen as important to offer such infrastructures and cooperation that businesses would want to be located in Espoo.Co-alignment of goals between companies and city administration was seen to facilitate collaboration.It was commonly assumed that by being committed to the Agenda, you can trust that the values and goals of the partners are sufficiently aligned so that the collaboration would be profitable and smooth for each.According to the mayor and councillors, climate action at the local level may even primarily be about economic policy actions.The local enterprises, too, have an increasing need to respond to their own sustainability goals and requirements (e.g.zero emissions), and a municipality able to offer carbon-neutral energy is believed to be truly attractive as a choice of location.
Alongside key enterprises, Aalto University emerged as one of the most significant partners in the interviews, and the `ecosystem of companies and research institutes` in the Otaniemi campus area was brought up in almost every interview.The university interviewees characterise cooperation with the city as `easy and nice`.Aalto University and the City of Espoo have worked together to streamline their strategies, and the related goals are formulated in a correlative manner.Based on the interviews, Aalto University's operations are very similar to those of the City of Espoo in many ways, and adopting the `SDG lenses` is perceived to have had a critical role in this.In recent years, both parties have intentionally aimed for more strategically managed and concrete collaboration.
Without exception, the leaders of all three major parties were mentioned in the interviews as the key catalysts of the change already achieved.In comparison with other European countries, the Finnish consensualism of party politics is notable, although the style of politics and media in Finland has also changed in recent decades, towards more populistic and controversial tones.Nonetheless, cooperation in politics, or with different stakeholders in the city, still takes place frequently and quite naturally, partly as a necessity in a multi-party system.The Committee of the Regions was also impressed by Espoo's collaborative culture and raised it as one of the most significant drivers of success, and an example to learn from also elsewhere.They also highlighted Espoo's pioneering role in the transition from administration-oriented management to a service-and cooperation-oriented governance style that is seen as a globally important strategy.Political leaders in Espoo felt, on their part, that cooperation is also facilitated when you elevate your perspective to significant phenomena and goals that involve many actors.In other words, it is pointless to argue about the details right away when you should be able to lead changes at the phenomenon level with a strategic big picture.
While the Espoo city strategy draws on the Agenda in sectoral management, too, the interviewees from the city administration felt that the goals and steering should be based even more strongly on the Agenda, not resorting to imposing the SDGs externally on top of the pre-existing sector-based duties.This was also seen to increase awareness of the SDGs among the whole personnel.As with any other strategy or goal, the interviewees saw it necessary to consider the Agenda's implications for the whole city organisation, in giving meaning to the SDGs and translating them into activities, programmes, and projects.Especially due to the global nature of the SDGs, the interviewees saw it necessary to select those SDGs that are most relevant for Espoo, translate them to the local level, and integrate them into the strategy.What was widely seen as most important, however, was the alignment of the SDGs with the city's own goals, to understand what they really mean and how they can be realised.
An example of this is SDG4 of high-quality and equal education and lifelong learning, which came up often in the interviews, but an interviewed administrator from the Growth and Learning division had the most concrete examples.At a quick glance, the goal seems like a long-recognised strength of Finnish society, which does not warrant further attention.However, one can look more critically at whether the goal is being realised for all children, or whether, for example, deviations can be seen among minority groups.It's a question of what constitutes reading and writing skills or technical skills in the Finnish digitalised society today, and whether all children, when they leave grammar school, have sufficient abilities to engage as active citizens.Do we define literacy merely as surviving everyday life, or, for example, critical media literacy or the ability to appeal a decision made by an authority?The interviewee also mentioned that due to a growing multiculturality, there are permanently already over 40 native languages taught at primary schools, but teaching is still organised with fixed-term project funding.The example shows that even if an issue is not perceived as urgent in a specific context, the SDGs can provide opportunities for organisations and individuals to challenge themselves to learn new things and advance as a society -which is necessary for surviving the sustainability crisis.
Although it was felt by the interviewees in the municipal council that the point is not yet reached where strategy work in Espoo, or its cooperation with various stakeholders or engagement in international networks, would be entirely based on the Agenda, they noticed more discussion about it at all levels, as well as more activities being to it.The Agenda thus presents multiple angles on sustainable development, some of them previously ignored, and expands the discussion to new forums and fields.
The interviews revealed some conflicting values and activities related to the localisation of the Agenda in Espoo.Politically, the Agenda was seen as a trustworthy document that reflected a common consensus, the legitimacy of which at least all major parties acknowledged.Its value was especially considered to be in its status as a globally high-ranking background force with common democratic acceptance so that no questions or doubts are raised about the motives of the goals and activities.However, some interviewees stated that decisionmaking and related administrative work were not yet sufficiently connected to the Agenda, nor was it investigated in the preparatory phase how the policies relate to the goals of sustainable development.Instead, the SDGs were often treated as an afterthought, and it was investigated only after the policies were decided upon, whether they could be linked with some SDGs, too.It seems contradictory that while the city presents itself as an Agenda pioneer, other ideologies or arguments might be more powerful in guiding decision-making.
There was also criticism within Aalto University about the lack of concreteness in the work of both the city and the university related to sustainable development, a concept that remained vague despite its inclusion in various strategies.Another issue concerns the time scale of political decisionmaking which follows four-year council terms.Policies and concrete actions are operationalised into action packages within a council term, and no one is held accountable for achieving the set goals, and decision-makers lack interest in taking bold measures when a single council term is too short to afford to claim credit for success.A key problem to be solved by politicians and municipal leaders is how to get from a mindset of short-term benefits or costs to more far-reaching thinking, and especially to the creation of new types of incentive structures to encourage farsighted and consistent action towards sustainable development.The importance of the long-term perspective becomes apparent in the influence of the city managers who have stayed in office for a long time, and in their role in carrying the strategy work somewhat successfully over the council terms.However, the risk of discontinuity prevails when decision-makers will inevitably be replaced.
The biggest challenge is how to transfer the globally formulated goals of the Agenda to the local context, considering what the deeper meaning of each goal is in the local context.The goals cover all key areas of well-being, equality, economy, and the environment, which should be at a good level in a relatively sustainable society, but their more precise formulation, measurement, and monitoring need to be adjusted to be suitable for each region and city.Appropriately defined goals can bring out operational flaws and challenges, but also motivate the maintenance of a good situation, and help in identifying one's strengths.

Discussion
In this section, we want to reflect on the findings from two angles.First, we consider how the SDGs are implemented at the local level, and what strategic choices in local governance are necessary for the promotion of the Agenda.Second, we reflect on the ideology of the Agenda itself from the perspective of the debate on ecological modernisation and question whether EMbased Agenda work, and especially its interpretation in Espoo, can support a real breakthrough towards sustainability.

Implementing the Agenda: are we doing enough?
First, we want to highlight Espoo's ambitions of `achieving` the Agenda.It is debatable whether the 17 SDGs and their subgoals can ever be achieved in the sense that problems would be solved once and for all.Certainly, considering the global interconnectedness of the environment, economy, and society, they seem impossible to achieve for a single city.Additionally, most of the targets are not defined as absolute numbers, but instead with relative words such as strengthen, achieve a higher level, promote, and improve.Some targets use terms such as ensure everybody or achieve full employment, which we can clearly recognise as impossible to achieve in a literal sense.Consequently, the SDGs should be understood as continuous guidance to be considered in everyday work, rather than a checklist to be completed.The Agenda and the SDGs can thus be integrated as a way of thinking, a change process, and strategic goals that set the development path for the whole city management.When all the decisions, development programmes, and actions are justified with Agenda and aligned with its targets, we can consider the implementation of the Agenda successful, even if its goals will never be fully achieved.If the goal is to manage a sustainable city, also the management should be able to well-handle the systemic cross-sectoral problems and be able to give up old-fashioned ways of leadership.As Sachs et al. (2019) have summarised, the SDGs call for deep transformations in every country (and city), requiring structural changes and actions across all sectors of society.
Two observations seem to speak in favour of the strategic use of the Agenda at the local level.First, while the state creates the framework conditions for cities and is responsible for strategy work in international forums such as the UN, a majority of the actions on the SDG sub-goals fall within the realm of local governance, and many concrete actions require cooperation between various authorities and stakeholders.As an interviewee aptly recognised: `We can clearly say that if the sustainable development goals are not implemented at the local and regional level, they will not be implemented at all.S econdly, when different sustainability goals are in conflict or are politically attached to different ideologies, it is easier to avoid sub-optimal responses when there is a framework for examining the larger whole.If the solutions and investments are being thought of more broadly than in terms of one individual goal, trade-offs with other goals are less likely.On the other hand, the achievement of many goals is not in the hands of the city organisation alone.Transformations need to address and resolve these trade-offs, but they should be co-financed through public and private money and engage both the business community and civil society (Sachs et al. 2019).In Espoo, the strategic cooperation is strong between the city, private businesses, universities, and also citizens, and the city organisation has well recognised the limitations of trying to work alone.An example is Espoo's carbon neutrality target.Most of the carbon emissions in the city come from the energy sector.Together with the listed energy company Fortum, which provides local district heating, the City of Espoo has committed to turning the total heating system carbon neutral by 2030.Fortum has already closed most of its coal power plants, and the share of carbon-neutral district heating has increased by 50% since 2014.New waste heat recovery solutions and other clean options are included in the open heating system every year (see City of Espoo 2020; Fortum 2023).Utilising the Agenda in strategic cooperation with other actors seems to offer the needed new instrument in finding common ground and mobilising private and civil society actors, since it is easier and more convincing to exchange information among stakeholders if the common SDG language can be used.Aligning city and company activities with the SDGs has also helped to gain funding from the EU for implementing projects (see Biermann et al. 2022).
Regarding the statement by Howes et al. (2010), who see the state as a promotor of EM, we could add the equally important role of the city, the local government, in its promotion.Christoff (1996) claims that in `strong` EM, trust in the technological innovations of the business world alone is not regarded as sufficient, but a systemic change in operating methods is also needed.Howes et al. (2012) add that the state would thereby take a clear and goal-oriented role, which includes the reorganisation of institutions, as well as reforms related to environmental legislation and the economy.We can see that, to promote `strong` EM, also the local government needs to take such a clear and goal-oriented role, which includes the reorganisation of management, and reforms to the local economy and norms of environmental behaviour.Although local governments do not enact legislation like states do, they do set and implement many norms.Within its territory, the city has a lot of influence over, for example, the issues related to energy, transport, land-use planning, building permits, and basic education.
We found many positive steps towards the implementation of SDGs and governmental transformations (Sachs et al. 2019) in Espoo.The city seems to be taking a proactive role in leading the transformations.As an example of stakeholder engagement, Espoo drafted its strategy, the Espoo Story, together with citizens, and has put up an SDG course in a local high school, that will be spread to the whole country together with the national Board of Education.Espoo creates new cross-administrative structures and has a strong aim to manage, facilitate, and take ownership of the sustainability transition in a clearly set time frame.Still, the localisation of the SDGs is not without shortcomings.The city needs to base its strategy and steering even more on the Agenda, instead of adding the SDGs as an externally imposed layer on top preexisting sector-based duties, or only evaluating afterwards how the actions aligned with the SDGs.As the SDGs are loose and legally non-binding guidelines the decision-making and implementation tend to be subjected to political motives that may prioritise other goals (Biermann et al. 2022), which inevitably affects the work of civil servants.
Lastly, one can question the reasonableness of ranking European cities in terms of certain sustainability indicators.A simplified comparison of cities does not consider their highly varied conditions.The natural, administrative, socio-demographic, cultural, and economic structures represent fundamental differences that cannot easily be changed.For example, despite its considerable population growth, Espoo hosts a large national park, while in some other cities, there is a need to remove parking places to get space for some greenery.Some cities may benefit from their favourable location within a metropolitan conurbation, while other cities are more peripherally located.The comparison also does not consider consumptionbased emissions, which are high in many prosperous cities.It would thus seem more appropriate to compare the progress, such as emission and consumption reductions, and improvements in social well-being and equality.Overall, however, sustainability is such a multifaceted concept, that it is challenging to break it down into a few indicators (Berisha et al. 2022) and to measure it in one place without considering broader global relations (Holgersen and Hult 2021).
Generally, in Espoo, the attitude towards sustainable development seems to be very positive and all actors are basically interested in the opportunities it offers, so there would not seem to be much opposition to taking the work forward much more boldly.

Ecological modernisation in Espoo: do we have the right paradigm?
It is evident that in Espoo the approach to sustainable development is reliant on the ecological modernisation paradigm.Inside the city management, the common impression was that ecological actions are in most cases primarily serving the economy, and this was also seen as the biggest motivation for the parties to promote `green` actions.Serving carbon-neutral energy or cooperating with the university or major companies were considered important actions for attracting good taxpayers, developing new innovations and start-ups, and in the end, boosting the city's competitiveness.Economic growth and sustainability are, indeed, not seen to be at odds in Espoo -on the contrary, there seems to be a loop in both directions.Economic growth and global competitiveness are expected to be boosted with the help of innovative green technologies, and, further, seen as a vehicle for sustainable development.In turn, demand for sustainability actions creates a vehicle towards economic growth if you decide to jump in.In Espoo, climate change is seen as a moment of opportunity for new businesses and `ecological handprint work`.
As Jänicke (2008) puts it, in general, an environmental problem proves politically easier to resolve if a marketable solution exists.In contrast, if a solution to an environmental problem requires an intervention in the established patterns of production, consumption, or transport, it is likely to meet resistance.But considering this, how should we manage these latter kinds of problems if we are not ready to change the paradigm?Politics needs to step in, especially in economically difficult issues or in cases where the affected party is unable to speak for itself, such as with the loss of nature and biodiversity.When the reliance on technological and market solutions is politically favoured in ecological modernisation, how do we enable a change of politics and government from traditional towards the more radical ways of working, if so, required by environmental crises?
The solutions offered to different environmental problems are currently partly contradictory.For example, when the decarbonisation of the transport sector relies on electrification, it is rarely considered that this requires a lot more minerals, chemicals, and a new kind of industry.In most cases, the opening of mines limits nature conservation and shrinks already small ecosystems (carbon sinks) and produces a great deal of environmentally harmful waste.Therefore, we question the ecological modernisation paradigm, even strong EM, in solving the environmental crises.
As the Agenda also strongly emphasises the wellbeing of the human species, it is easy to harness the Agenda to match the paradigm of EM.In addition, political leadership in all public administration remains the challenge, where the value debate often does not consider environmental aspects as the most important decision-making criterion.In a democratic system, the elected politicians aim to pursue the alleged interests of their own voters, which in practice excludes the possibility of impairing the standard of living and setting limits to growth.Actions are always value choices, and environmental values are still not considered sufficient in their own right, but their justification is found through their instrumentality to values that support economy, employment, and well-being.

Concluding remarks
This article has presented the efforts of the Finnish city of Espoo to harness the Agenda 2030 and SDGs in local governance, and thus provides an interesting example of SDG localisation.The Espoo case reveals interesting initial results on the potentiality of embedding the UN Agenda 2030 in the city's strategic governance and programmatic actions.The findings suggest that the Agenda is best applied if it is adopted as part of concrete policy steering and action (such as curriculum planning in the education sector, or zoning regulations in plans) without positioning it merely as a set of indicators to be separately monitored.Wellrounded sustainable development work requires networked and integrative leadership and clear changes in thinking and working practices, but it also brings benefits and facilitates collaboration with different stakeholders (Purkarthofer et al. 2024).
While SDG localisation is becoming an increasingly important subject globally, the limitations of generalising findings based on the presented case have to be acknowledged.The autonomy of local authorities is high in Finland, providing municipalities such as Espoo with more leverage regarding the implementation of the SDGs than their counterparts in most other countries.This concerns especially the city's authority over its finances, which often remains a hindrance in SDG localisation (Jones and Comfort 2020).The same notion applies in EM (as such being recognised especially in Western Europe and the Nordics) that may not apply worldwide to countries where the empowerment of local governments is low or the whole political system is remarkably different.
Moreover, the Agenda work cannot be separated from the broader development of the city over the last decades.It can be argued that Espoo's strive for sustainable development started from a privileged position, derived for example from the municipalities' rich natural resources, comprehensive provision of health and wellbeing services, and high level of education.Consequently, the grounds of the Telos Institute for nominating Espoo as Europe's most sustainable city, or the reasonableness of the exercise in the first place, may well be questioned.Regardless, the occurrence of the nomination, and the following invitation by the UN to take the role of a pioneering city in the implementation of the Agenda, have clearly had an impact on Espoo's governance.It has directed the attention of administrators and politicians on sustainable development, facilitated agreement on related goals, and spurred ambitions in implementing them.
However, in a broader view, the reliance of Espoo on the ecological modernisation paradigm, which can also be ascribed to the Agenda itself, can be argued to be questionable in resolving the fundamental climate and environmental crisis that humanity is facing.Politics must find new ways to prioritise environmental values more strongly in decision-making, and foster structural changes through, e.g.taxes, incentives, and firmer legislation.While such a governance turn might be unpopular among voters, it is needed to enable real transition, which goes beyond using the language of Agenda 2030 to rebrand existing unsustainable policies.When sustainable development is in particular a societal challenge, it leads to a need for especially for administrative changes rather than technical development.
While the efforts of Espoo, and many other cities, towards implementing the SDGs, must be applauded, research has the obligation to point critically at shortcomings and inconsistencies in the strive for sustainable development.Future research on the localisation of SDGs is needed to better understand whether the Agenda 2030 impacts policymaking at the city level profoundly.In addition to research that builds on monitoring of indicators at the local level (see e.g.Ciambra et al. 2023), qualitative research needs to pay special attention to the strategic use of the Agenda as a common language, framework for negotiation, and vehicle for collaboration, and the factors that enable or hinder structural changes required in the face of environmental crises.