Narratives Behind Climate Strategy in Finland

Abstract

The 2015 Paris Agreement (PA) represents a profound change in global climate governance becoming a blueprint for other governance arenas. However, the varying success of reaching the national climate targets, unstable security, and growing right-wing populism poses a question of which direction the EU climate policy is moving after ten years of PA. The success of this agreement depends heavily on the effectiveness of national climate change policies wherein political parties have a critical role in developing these policies while also impacting public attitudes on climate change.

We use the case of Finnish climate strategy as a case of national climate strategy. We analyzed Finnish climate policy documents by using Ostrom’s IAD Framework and Multiple stream framework analysis to create the narratives behind the Finnish climate strategy. The Institutional Analysis and Development framework (IAD) is a conceptual tool that Ostrom and her colleagues developed to analyze and understand the complex interactions and dynamics within institutions that govern common-pool resources. Our research question is: What are the narratives behind the Finnish climate strategy?

Key words: Climate strategy, narrative, IAD framework, Multiple stream analysis framework