Thank you. I am delighted to appear.
Hello, Canada. It's a great pleasure to see you all on the other side of the video. It's a very interesting time to give a presentation from Finland to you, because a couple of weeks ago our Prime Minister and government resigned and we will have parliamentary elections on April 14. I have been listening to what the parties and candidates have been talking about as the elections are coming, and it's amazing how universal it is that all parties in Finland feel that we need to be very active in stopping climate change.
Actually, most of these strategies and some good examples, which I will now tell you about, have been adopted by Parliament, so they are very widely supported.
First of all, in terms of climate change and the circular bio-economy, Finland has a long-term objective to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels. The Finnish government has set an additional target that Finland will be carbon neutral by 2045. Significant actions have already been carried out. For example, the Finnish Parliament just recently accepted legislation, and under this new law, it will be prohibited to use coal in energy production from June 2029 onward.
Finland is part of an EU-wide emissions trading system and has ambitious targets for 2030 to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions in the so-called effort sharing sector by 39% compared with 2005 levels. “Effort sharing sector” means traffic, construction, houses and agriculture.
Finland aims also to be a forerunner in the circular economy by 2025. This is a guiding principle in the Finnish road map to a circular economy, prepared jointly by relevant ministries and other stakeholders to respond to the opportunities offered by the circular economy.
Transition towards a more circular economy is in progress. New businesses are closing the loops in product life cycles. For example, land filling has greatly decreased and recycling and reuse are gaining ground. As another example, as you know, Finland has a lot of forests. We have also a lot of pulp mills. Nowadays pulp mills call themselves bio-economy centres because nothing is wasted; all by-products are used and made into new products such as biofuel and other things. So, the circular economy is also that.
I'll say a few words about the sustainable development goals, SDGs for 2030. Finland is included, through international sustainable development goals, in different strategies and we have had for quite a long time, actually, a national commission on sustainable development chaired by the Prime Minister. But instead of having a traditional strategy document, the national commission on sustainable development decided to introduce society's commitment to sustainable development. It is called “The Finland we want by 2050”. Under the commitment, the public sector together with other actors pledges to promote sustainable development in all its work and operations. Different stakeholders and public sector organizations have already made almost 2,000 commitments personally once they are in office or through their authority, aiming to implement sustainable development goals.
Also, in our annual budget, which the government gives to Parliament, we give a review of what we have really done to implement SDGs in the year and what we are aiming to do next year.
I have two examples of how the government is greening its activities. One comes from my ministry, the Ministry of the Environment. We have some other partners—not all are ministries, but many are—who have certified offices by the World Wildlife Fund, WWF green offices. The green office certificate helps offices to reduce the carbon footprint of the office, to use natural resources wisely and to protect biodiversity.
In my office we can follow what we have really done—for example, saving paper, being more energy effective and perhaps also travelling less by airplane. Another example of greening the government comes from public procurement, probably also like in Canada. In Finland, the value of public procurement is over 30 billion euros annually, so around 16% of our GDP.
The government has made a decision in principle, setting targets on public procurements. They are good targets, but the practical tool we use is established between relevant ministries. It's a sort of a network-based centre of excellence, the purpose being to increase the ambition and expertise of various actors and influence sustainability and circularity in procurements. Not only the state government or ministries are doing this job; also the local municipalities and companies are making quite a big decision by public procurements.
The last topic is that we will be chairing the European Union's council from the beginning of July to the end of this year. We are preparing for our coming chairmanship. One issue that we are now dealing with is that we know when we are chairing, it will increase the flight travels of European politicians and secret service people between Brussels and Helsinki. As part of this presidency program, the government is planning to compensate CO2 emissions of flight travels. We are planning that beyond this chairmanship; we'll continue this compensation system.
Thank you for listening to me.