Finland - Jyvaskyla Region - Final Self-Evaluation Report.pdf

Box 6.7 Promoting sustainable development by international collaborationThe Norwat project was approved in mid-2004 and it will continue until 2007. Four countries and twelvepartners are participating in it. Finland is the lead partner and the overall project manager is the JyväskyläPolytechnic’s Institute of Natural Resources. Other participants from Central Finland are the MunicipalAuthority of Saarijärvi, the Forestry Centre of Central Finland, the Central Finland RegionalEnvironment Centre and the University of Jyväskylä (Institute for Environmental Research).The project aims at finding and disseminating new ways of making the best use of watercourses for thebenefit of local sustainable community development. Many communities live alongside watercourses,and the project will improve the inter-relationship between environmental and socio-economic wellbeingin these areas. This will be achieved under the heading of three themes: (1) sustainable land usemanagement to protect water quality; (2) naturalization of watercourses to restore and enhance riversidenatural habitats; and (3) education, interpretation and training to raise awareness of the value and uses ofwatercourses. By working together the project partners will produce best practice manuals related tothese themes for the benefit of the whole Northern Periphery Programme (NPP) area.The University of Jyväskylä does important research in the fields of bio-gas technologies and the recovery ofcontaminated soil and water bodies (Box 6.8). The department of Biological and Environmental Science atthe University of Jyväskylä provides education and research in the fields of ecology and environmentalmanagement, aquatic resources and environmental sciences. It operates in close cooperation with theInstitute of Environmental Research at the University, which plays an important role in the environmentalcluster of the region as a producer of scientific research, and a provider of services and training in addition tothe accredited laboratory services in the field of environmental studies.Box 6.8 The region’s lakes provide a research environmentLocated right in the heart of the City of Jyväskylä, Lake Jyväsjärvi has been the subject of continuousmonitoring for some years. As recently as in the 1970s, Lake Jyväsjärvi was virtually dead. Largequantities of sewage and waste water from industry had got into the lake and ruined it. Nowadays, thelake is clean enough to swim in and the fish are fit for human consumption.The Jyväsjärvi project aiming to survey the conditions of the lake was started in 2000 by the Departmentof Biological and Environmental Science at the University of Jyväskylä. As a part of the creation of aresearch environment, the project involved the construction of a research raft known as Aino, which waspositioned on the lake. The raft monitors the state of the lake and transmits the obtained data to theinternet for the use of residents.At the beginning of 2004, a Jyväsjärvi-Päijänne Research Environment project was launched at theDepartment of Biological and Environmental Science. It aimed at putting aquatic environment data andtechnology to commercial use, with particular reference to Lake Päijänne as an environment for expertiseand research. The project is a follow-up to an earlier research project involving Lake Jyväsjärvi, which isa contiguous part of Lake Päijänne, Finland’s second largest lake, separated from the main lake by anarrow channel. Financed by the European Regional Development Fund, municipalities and severalcompanies, the new project will gather environment-related data on Lake Päijänne and the municipalitiessurrounding it. The data will be placed in the internet where it will be available to students, researchersand non-academic people alike. The goals of the project are: (1) to produce information for follow-upresearch on Lake Päijänne and other water systems; (2) to exploit the large amounts of availableenvironmental information; (3) to support the processing of that information and any entrepreneurshipbuilt upon it; and (4) to educate experts and researchers.Environmental issues are also taken into account in the field of business education and research at theUniversity of Jyväskylä. Environmental sustainability has become an important element in the managementof both private and public organizations. To respond to the increasing needs, the School of Business andEconomics launched a programme in corporate environmental management in 1995 (Box 6.9).93