This document provides information about Finland under several topics: 1. Finland is located in Northern Europe, bordered by Sweden, Norway, Russia and Estonia, with a population of around 5.5 million concentrated in the southern region. 2. Education in Finland includes childhood education, basic education, vocational and university programs, as well as lifelong learning opportunities. A pilot project called VaSkooli improved guidance and increased the percentage of youth continuing their education. 3. Other sections discuss climate change adaptation, waste reduction efforts, sustainability initiatives, and transportation networks in Finland.

2. Situated in the Fennoscandian region of
Northern Europe
Bordered by Sweden to the west, Norway
to the north, Russian to the east and
Estonia to the south.
As of 2013 – population around 5.5
million
*majority concentrated in its southern
region

3. EDUCATION

4. • Child day care, pre-school education and play club activities
• Basic Education
• Upper Secondary School Education
• Vocational Basic Education
• Universities of Applied Sciences
• University Education
• Adult Education
• Vocational Apprenticeship Training

5. EDUCATION
• Training Guarantee
- every youngster who completes
comprehensive school should have the
opportunity to get further education
- The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture
aims to achieve this for 96% of all youngsters
who complete basic education

6. • VaSkooli pilot project
- was implemented in two regions in
South-West Finland, Turku and Salo, from 2004 to
2008
- The Training Guarantee Model they developed is
based on providing multi-disciplinary guidance and
support, offering flexible cooperation in working
life, ensuring an adequate number of student
places, supporting parental responsibility and
increasing the life management and work
experience of the students.

7. • Lessons learned in the pilot project:
- Communication and information transfer between basic and further
education require attention
- There is a need for more cooperation between different school
levels, youth organisations, employment offices etc.
- Guidance should be easily accessible to all and should also be
developed further
- New guidance, support and other operational models should be
developed and implemented in basic and further education
- We need enough student places and must manage them well
- New operational models are required
- Cooperation is required for the transition from school to work

8. • Results of VaSkooli:
1. More young people are moving on to secondary-level vocational education
• The training guarantee rate in Turku and Salo regions went up from 93.9 %
in 2004 to 95.1 % in 2006
• The overall dropout rate at Turku Vocational Institute, one of the biggest
training institutions in Finland to provide secondary-level vocational
education with over 4,000 students, decreased from 4.7 % in 2004 (and
almost 10 % in the early 2000s) to 2.8 % in 2008
2. Good practices for education and guidance
• New guidance, support and education models
• Low-threshold counselling and follow-up guidance
• New models for communication, cooperation and transfer of information
3. Less social exclusion among young people
4. Reduced social costs
5. Increased competent and motivated labour force in Finland

9. WASTE
• Inspired by the Sustainability 2017
Vision, Johnson Matthey Finland has taken on the
goal of achieving zero waste to landfill and has –
very nearly – met that target some six years
ahead of the deadline, thanks to a series of well
executed strategies.
• Waste was defined in ten separate
categories, including solid hazardous
waste, paper, packaging material, burnable
waste, organic waste solvent, waste water, glass
and metal ware

10. • The amount of waste in each category was set out and
an end use described. This helped clarify best practice
– sometimes already in place – and identified the need
to find the right partner for waste disposal in certain
categories.
• Plastic materials (such as bags and cisterns), wood
based waste, disposable dishes and paper towels are
all sent for incineration, using the leading Finnish
provider of recycling services. Most of this waste is
used to provide energy for the city of Turku, where
Johnson Matthey Finland has its site.

11. • A project was set up to reduce the amount of
hazardous liquid waste generated and as part of
this, the site has substituted a C6 hydrocarbon
with aqueous ethanol – offering health and safety
benefits, as well as financial savings. In other
categories of waste, wooden pallets and shipping
materials, such as bubble wrap or plastic
chips, are reused if they are non-contaminated.
Printing cartridges are returned to the
manufacturer for refilling, and scrap metal and
glass are sent for recycling.

12. • The site’s ‘return, reduce, reuse and recycle’
activities mean that only 0.01% of waste now
goes to landfill. Projects are planned to tackle
the outstanding waste – which includes vials
made of glass and metal, used in chemical
analysis – and improve current practice, such
as recycling more of the plastic.

13. • The environmental benefits are impressive.
Burnable waste becomes energy; recycling
saves on the use of freshly produced raw
material; and the avoidance of landfill helps
reduce methane emissions (in Finland 3% of
greenhouse gases originate from landfill).
Finally, there are financial gains all round, not
least because sending waste to landfill costs
15% more than sorting it and reusing it

14. Climate
• Climate change is expected to have significant impacts
on societies and ecosystems around the globe.
• The best way to minimize adverse impacts is to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. However, global warming
will continue and mitigation efforts start to affect the
speed of warming only in the last part of the century.
• Therefore, it is also essential to adapt to climate
change.
• Finland is one of the European forerunners in
mainstreaming adaptation strategy.

15. • The implementation of the National Strategy
for Adaptation to Climate Change has been
taking place since 2005 when the strategy was
released.
• The objective of the strategy is to reinforce
the adaptive capacity of the society and
minimize the adverse impacts of climate
change, but also when appropriate to take
advantage of its benefits.

16. • Priorities identified for increasing adaptation
capacities include
(i) mainstreaming climate change impacts into
sectoral policies;
(ii) targeting long-term investments;
(iii) coping with extreme weather events;
(iv) improving monitoring systems;
(v) Strengthening research and development and
(vi) internationalcooperation.

17. • The implementation of the strategy has been
evaluated. According to it the adaptation
measures are most advanced in water resources
and flood risk management and in agriculture
and forestry.
• Detailed action plans are made in environmental
administration considering e.g. spatial
planning, construction and ecosystem services.
• Mainstreaming is gradually extending into
regional and local level adaptation and even into
institutional action plans.

18. CLIMATE
• In northern countries the temperature is projected to
increase more than the global average;
• in Finland the expected temperature increase varies
between 1.5 to 7 °C by the end of the century, depending
on the emission scenarios.
• Precipitation is also expected in increase in future. These
changes are projected to be bigger in winter than in
summer.
• In addition to the gradual changes in the average climate
conditions more frequent extreme weather events are
expected to cause serious problems to the society and have
a tremendous impact on ecosystems and the utilisation of
natural sources.

20. WATER
• The Community Development Fund (CDF), a funding
mechanism developed in the Finnish-Ethiopian
bilateral Rural Water Supply and Environmental
Programme in Amhara Region, has achieved great
speed and efficiency of construction as well as
sustainability of community-managed water and
sanitation facilities.
• Unlike direct community support in the traditional
sense, the CDF grant is disbursed through a local
microfinance institution, against an application and
plan by communities supported by district water
teams.

21. • The Finnish-Ethiopian bilateral Rural Water
Supply and Environment Programme (RWSEP),
has facilitated community-driven construction of
small-scale rural water and sanitation
infrastructure in Ethiopia since 1994, having so
far served more than 1,2 million Ethiopians.
• lesson drawn is that speed and cost-efficiency of
construction have increased significantly since
the 2003 introduction of an innovative fund flow
mechanism, the Community Development Fund
(CDF).

22. • With CDF, communities themselves are responsible for
planning, implementation and maintenance of
communal water points, while the government’s role is
limited to administration, facilitation and training.
• The grant is channelled to communities via a local
Micro- Credit Institution known as the Amhara Credits
and Savings Institute (ACSI).
• The system replaces the conventional local government
development project funding mechanisms, where
funding is channelled through a government
organisation

23. • The minimum community contribution requirement is
15% of the total investment cost, consisting of both
cash and in-kind contributions. A set minimum is
collected as an up-front cash contribution from each
household, deposited into a savings account in ACSI to
cover operation and maintenance (O&M) costs.
• The communities, through elected Water, Sanitation
and Hygiene Committees (watsancos) are fully
responsible for the funds allocated to them during the
construction phase, including procurement of
materials, equipment, construction tools and
constructionservices.

24. • Finland is a long-term partner of Vietnam in
water sector reform. The cooperation between
Vietnam and Finland in the water sector dates
back to 1985.
• In the beginning, Finland provided conventional
investment-oriented support to relieve acute
problems. Over the years, the cooperation has
been diversified and deepened to tackle the root
causes of the low level of water supply and
sanitation, and Finland has taken on a broader
role in the water sector reform in Vietnam.

25. SUSTAINABILITY

26. • The National Strategy for Sustainable
Development is assessed every two years, and it
is linked to the European Union’s assessment
process. First evaluation was conducted in 2007.
• The success and progress of sustainable
development is monitored by means of
sustainable development indicators which are
developed and updated by the national indicator
network in cooperation with the FNCSD

27. • Finland is also engaged in a development
project for the assessment of sustainable
development impacts. The aim is to develop a
tool with which the administrative sectors can
assess the social, economicand environmental
impacts of sustainable development
objectives and gain an under-standing of how
the diversity and long-term aims of
sustainable development challenges can best
be taken into account in planning.

28. • Energy efficiency has long been on the
agenda. Natural resource and material use
arouse interest whenever there are price
fluctuations or fear that in the near future
some of the reserves will be depleted. Besides
the availability, there are tworeasons why we
should focus on material efficiency: money
and climate.

29. Transport
The extensive road system is utilized by most
internal cargo and passenger traffic.
As of 2010, the country's network of main roads
has a total length of around 78,162 kilometres
(48,568 mi) and all public roads 104,161
kilometres (64,723 mi).
The motorway network totals 779 kilometres
(484 mi) with additional 124 kilometres (77 mi)
reserved only for motor traffic.

30. • Despite low population density, taxpayers
spend annually around 350 million euro
in maintaining 5,865 kilometres
(3,644 mi) railway tracks even to many
rural towns.
• Operations are privatized and currently
the only operator is the state-owned
VR. Helsinki has an urban rail network.

31. Passenger trains are operated by the state-owned
VR Group.
serve all the major cities and many rural areas,
complemented by bus connections where needed.
Most passenger train services originate or
terminate at Helsinki Central railway station, and a
large proportion of the passenger rail network
radiates out of Helsinki.

32. • High-speed Pendolino services are operated from Helsinki
to other major cities like Tampere and Turku.
• Modern InterCity services complement the Pendolino
network, and cheaper and older long and short distance
trains operate in areas with fewer passengers
• The Helsinki area has three urban rail systems: a tramway, a
metro, and a commuter rail system. Light rail systems are
currently being planned for Turku and Tampere, two of the
country's other major urban centres

33. Trams and Light Rail
In Finland there have been three cities with
trams: Helsinki, Turku and Viipuri. Only Helsinki has retained its
tramway network. The Vyborg tramway network ceased operations
in 1957, after the city had been ceded to the Soviet Union, while
the Turku tramway network shut down in 1972.
As of 2010, Turku and Tampere have preliminary plans for new
tram systems, but no decision to build them has been made.
Helsinki currently operates 12 tramlines on a network of
approximately 90 kilometres (56 mi) of track in passenger service

34. Air transport
There are 148 airfields, 76 of which have paved
runways.
21 airports are served by scheduled passenger flights.
By far the largest airport is Helsinki-Vantaa
Airport, and the second largest by passenger volume is
Oulu Airport.
The larger airports are managed by the state-owned
Finavia (formerly the Finnish Civil Aviation
Administration). Finnair, Flybe Nordic and Norwegian
Air Shuttle are the main carriers for domestic flights.

35. Water transport
Frequent ferry service connects Finland with
Estonia and Sweden.
Baltic cruise liners regularly call on the port
of Helsinki as well.
In domestic service, ferries connect Finland's
islands with the mainland. Finland's cargo
ports move freight both for Finland's own
needs and for transshipment to Russia.

36. Economy
Finland was a relatively latecomer to
industrialization, remaining a largely
agrarian country until 1950s.
Now has a highly industrialized mixed
economy with a per capita output
equal to that of other European
economies such as France, German
and UK.

37. GNP per capita was around 31,700
euros (2006).
Currency: The Finnish currency unit
is the euro.
Finland was one of the 12 EU
(European Union) countries that
started using euro cash in 2002.

38. services
66%
manufacturing
31%
primary
production
3%0%
Sector of economy in
Finland

39. Finland has timber and several mineral and
freshwater resources.
Forests play a key role in the country
economy, making it one of the world’s
leading wood procedures and providing raw
materials at competitive prices for the crucial
wood-processing industries.

40. Finland also highly
integrated in the global
economy and
international trade is a
third of GDP (gross
domestic product)