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Sustainability transitions require new policy pathways that significantly reduce the environmental impacts caused by, for example, energy production, mobility and food production. Transition management (TM) is one of the approaches aiming at the creation of new ways to govern transitions. It uses transitions arenas (TA) as a key process and platform where new policy pathways are created in collaboration with multiple (frontrunner) stakeholders. TM’s ambitious and demanding agenda is not easy to implement. There is a continued need for testing and developing new ways of carrying out its key processes. We redesigned the TA process in the context of energy system change in Finland by 2030, focusing on interim goals, mid-range change pathways and developing a new notation system that allows participants to directly create the pathways. The resulting renewed TA process results in more specific and detailed mid-range pathways that provide more concreteness to how to implement long-term transition goals. It helps to bridge long-term national visions/strategies and low carbon experiments that are already running. The Finnish TA work created eight ambitious change pathways, pointing towards new and revised policy goals for Finland and identifying specific policy actions. Evaluation of the TA, 6–9 months after its completion underscores that an effective TA needs to be embedded by design in the particular political context that it seeks to influence. It is too early to say to what degree the pathways will be followed in practice but there are positive signs already.

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Global megatrends such as scarcity of natural resources and urbanization have been the drivers for a mining sector upswing. Therefore, the mining sector in Finland, with attractive ore geology, has recently experienced rapid growth and new mines have been opened. At the same time, society's expectations have increased, resulting in a public debate on mining companies' environmental and social responsibility. Companies have the same positioning choices relative to their competitors, but environmental issues are a new area of interest in order to stand out strategically. In this study of companies with mining operations in Finland, strategic environmental management practices are examined based on companies' own public information. This article takes a closer look at whether their public reporting projects an image of strategic environmental management. The results show that environmental and social considerations are essential elements in companies' commitments and strengthen their business strategy. This study also shows a gap between strategic commitments and their implementation, based on the company reports.

Finland is a country of few people and relatively long distances, and this places pressure on maintaining an efficient private transport infrastructure, while at the same time visions of low carbon mobility systems exist and are increasingly created, particularly in more densely populated areas. In this chapter we analyse the drivers and barriers for low-carbon mobility in Finland. Recent years have witnessed a phase where several structures have become more supportive of change than ever before, both through long-term focus and experimental governance. Transition towards low carbon transport regimes shows promise particularly in the Helsinki Metropolitan region of Finland. Yet even when the transition towards sustainable mobility is advancing, barriers and drivers co-exist both at the level of the global and national landscapes and of national and metropolitan regimes. Nevertheless, transition can be evidenced by an increasing number of regime drivers and a reducing number of barriers.