Opportunities and challenges for future: regional development in the North

What are the challenges and opportunities for future regional development in the Nordic Region? And how can the Nordic Cooperation Programme on Regional Policy be relevant in responding to this question? This was the focus of a seminar held in Akureyri in 2019 where six invited authors as well as discussants selected amongst the members of the Committee of Senior Officials for Regional Policy and Nordregio’s Board of Directors presented their views on these questions.

Sotarauta’s et al paper is premised on the idea there are no one-size-fits-all theories and models for transforming regions towards greater sustainability. Consequently, green path development calls for place-sensitive policies, supportive institutional arrangements and the identification of particular leverage points for transition. All this leads to issues related to change agency. This paper proposes that to enhance green path development and to truly construct sustainable regional development models, we need to better understand what actors can actually do to transform and reinvent their regions, and how this can be achieved. There is a need to reach beyond policy formulation and implementation debates. In this paper, these issues are scrutinised from the perspective of green path development and change agency in Nordic regions. The paper is based on the Nordic research project ‘Where Does the Green Economy Grow? The Geography of Nordic Sustainability Transitions.’ 

Sotarauta, M., Hansen, T., Jolly, S. & Suvinen, N. 2019. Green Path Development and Change Agency in Nordic Regions: A Collage from the Observations of the Gonst Project. In Nilsson, K. (ed.) Opportunities and challenges for future regional development, 71-79. Nordic Working Papers NA2019:902. Nordic Council of Ministers; Stockholm.