As Akordi celebrates its tenth anniversary this December we’d like to pause and give thanks to our international colleagues for their support. Right at the time when Akordi was founded in 2013, our mentor Merrick Hoben, the director of the Washington office of the US Consensus Building Institute (CBI), came to Finland to support the […]
On November 21st, 2023, Akordi released a new report examining the results of a collaborative process between wind power and reindeer herding. You can download the report here [In Finnish – English version to appear later] The transition to clean energy involves increasing usage of wind power and other renewable energy sources. However, if the […]
Adapting agriculture to a changing environment requires major structural changes. The challenge is that there is often no consensus on solutions or even the root causes of the problem. Collaboration among stakeholders is critical to ensure that as many voices as possible are involved in shaping the solutions and supporting their implementation. While agriculture is […]
Akordi’s Annual Report for the Year 2022 The annual report succinctly encapsulates Akordi Ltd’s ninth operational year in 2022. Download the annual report here.
Discussions about the sustainability of forest use are more topical than ever. However, they lack a shared understanding of what sustainability is and how it can be measured. A collaborative Argumenta project aimed to address this knowledge gap and develop a shared knowledge base. To this end, Akordi facilitated a series of interactions between Jyväskylä […]
Akordi is one of the new operators in the House of Science and Hope at Puistokatu 4. On Monday, the long-awaited day was celebrated, as the first cohort of researchers and contributors at Puistokatu 4 came together to meet each other and get to know the future working spaces of the house. Selected from a […]
A model for monitoring the effects of mining activities on water bodies is being developed in Sodankylä in collaboration with a wide variety of stakeholders. The Nessling Foundation has granted funding to Akordi for the year 2023 to implement a project aimed at disseminating research findings. The project involves constructing a model for monitoring the […]
The future vision of the Tampere urban region’s commuter train was developed in a phased process through the graduate thesis of Sini Raita-aho, who served as an intern and project researcher at Akordi. Her thesis, titled “Advancing Regional Cooperation – Negotiation Process in Coordinating Interests in Regional Transportation System Collaboration,” was approved by the Faculty […]
National land use objectives (In Finnish: “Valtakunnallisten alueidenkäyttötavoitteiden”; VAT) evolve with the times, serving as a guide for spatial planning by the government to address nationally significant needs comprehensively. As the operating environment changes, so do the requirements for guiding land use. An assessment of land use objectives explored the effectiveness of current goals and […]
I was an intern at Akordi, a small not for profit company in Finland starting from February to May in 2022. At the beginning, it was almost overwhelming how Akordi is involved in such a wide variety of different types and levels of processes; multi-party negotiations, national-level policy development, intra-organizational interventions, writing handbooks on how […]
Today Akordi hosted a group of students from Virginia Tech Leadership in Global Sustainability program. The visit was part of their excursion to Finland to learn about Nordic transfomations. Akordi founders Jonna Kangasoja and Lasse Peltonen shared the origin story of the not-for-profit company and the research based foundations for Mutual Gains Approach Akordi is using in […]
by Jonna Kangasoja I was invited to speak at the NELIS (Next Leaders’ Initiative for Sustainability) Europe Summit 2019 in Helsinki last week. The request was to share some key lessons on leading through conflict. Any wisdom I have, I have learned from my wise teachers, both the official ones (e.g. Robert R. Stains, Steve […]
Environmental disasters can become important events in our individual lives and in the collective memory of a nation. Even eras can be named after them as we may refer to a time before and after the Chernobyl accident. At some point of our lives, almost all of us can expect to be directly or indirectly […]
The Regional Council of South Ostrobothnia and The Finnish Environment Institute together with Akordi assembeled a citizen jury to discuss the use of marshlands as a part of preparing the Regional Plan of South Ostrobothnia. The aim of the proposed plan is to integrate the interests of peat production, conservation and other marshland usages. The […]
We asked Akordi mentor, professor Lawrence Susskind, founder of the the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program, “What do we know about environmental dispute resolution?”. He offered the following list of fifteen things we know – for an actual fact. The still timely list was Originally published on Consensus Building Approach, “Fifteen Things We Know About Environmental Dispute Resolution” […]
In the aftermath of an environmental or other type of disaster, we often find out that someone or some faction had already given a pre-emptive warning about the looming crisis. An outrage follows: who screwed up, why were these warnings ignored and why was no preventive action taken? It brings up a valid question: why […]
Winning and being a winner are two very different things when it comes to interest based negotiation. During a one week course in Joensuu about Environmental Collaboration and Conflict Resolution this distinction was elaborated with an exercise that can be used in recognizing three important factors in successful negotiation. In August 2018 NOVA University Network organized together […]
The city of Jyväskylä has finalised its first strategic Forest Programme. The consensus building process facilitated by Akordi had five different phases: 1) stakeholder assessment, 2) defining the process and its goals, 3) joint fact-finding, 4) finding and discussing the solutions and 5) compacting the programme. The sixth phase will be implementation and evaluation phase. The process […]
Iijoki is a great river flowing through Northern Ostrobothnia. The river is harnessed by hydroelectric power production and it’s characterized by similar problems and needs as other river valleys of its kind. One of the common factors is a requirement to recover the vitality of migratory fish stocks. It has been recognized that the river […]
PROGRAM 8:00 Coffee 8:30 Morning Session: Framework for Collaborative Governance (Participants are asked to bring a case or situation for discussion that they are facing or have faced that might benefit from collaborative approaches.) Why Collaborative Governance is a Necessity in 21st Century Defining Collaborative Governance and its Unique Dynamics in Public Problem […]
The CBI Global Network Following the 20th Anniversary Symposium, the Consensus Building Institute convened and hosted the first gathering of The CBI Global Network, a diverse community of leading practitioners and scholars spanning the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia. See Network members: https://www.cbi.org/who-we-are/?tab=global-network
MIT Professor Lawrence Susskind visited Finland in June 2014. His visit started with a two-day summit on Environmental Collaboration and Conflict Resolution in the Fiskars Village one hundred kilometers west of Helsinki in Southern Finland. The summit gathered twenty leading professionals from local and national government, the Sámi Parliament, large Finnish corporations representing energy sector, […]