 I am now very pleased to announce the next session, which is coming to you from our regional network in northern Europe based at the Gothenburg Centre for Sustainable Development, which is a shared centre between the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology, also in Gothenburg in Sweden. So they will talk to us about some exciting insights on the Nordic perspective of sustainable development, and will also show us one of their flagship projects, the so-called STG assessment tool. I am therefore very happy to introduce you all to Dr. Martin Ericsson, who is the Network Manager of SDSN Northern Europe, and he's also a scientist in the fields of environmental science and sustainability. He will kick us off today talking about how to get started with the STGs. Martin, the floor is yours. Thank you very much to Rotea. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the STSN, Northern Europe's session during this happiness and sustainability around the Earth webinar. We think this is a fantastic event to be able to do this 24 hours around the globe. It's a great initiative and we are proud to contribute with some content from our Northern Europe network. As Dr. Rotea said, my name is Martin Ericsson. I'm the Network Manager for SDSN Northern Europe. By my side I have our communications officer, Nina Sylo, who's helping me to broadcast this session. In Gothenburg today, we feel very happy. It's sunny weather. We are not at a complete lockdown from the COVID-19 situation, so we are fine. But we will actually talk mostly about sustainability today and not so much about happiness as such. But we believe that sustainable development is the basis for happiness. Let's move on. I will now try to share my screen with you. I hope that you will be able to see something now. Works perfectly, Martin. Yes. It looks good. Great. Yes, it does. Thank you for that. Let me just... Sorry for that. The SDSN Northern Europe is a region network, as Dr. Rotea mentioned, for the Nordic countries. This is Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, which you can see on this map here. We currently have 53 members and the majority of those members are universities. But we also have some research institutes, some foundations and NGOs for example. In addition, we have an SDSN youth network with 30 members currently. You can find more information about us on our website, unsdsn-ne.org. So let me explain how the today's session from us will be organized. We will start in a few minutes presenting the SDG Impact Assessment Tool. So this is a nice resource for anyone who wants to get started with the SDGs in a practical and structured way. After that, we will have a very interesting presentation about the climate framework for higher education institutions in Sweden and how to work strategically with climate change issues between organizations. And lastly, we will actually broadcast a panel discussion where I interviewed four eminent experts on sustainability, which was broadcast previously on our first online member conference. Our two co-chairs, Catherine Richardson and Johan Pettersson, which you see here to the left in the row of pictures, participated here. But also two members of our leadership council, Annik Margron-Fert and Kaisa Koronen-Kurki, which you see to the right in that row of people there. In between these blocks, we also hope to be able to answer some interesting questions from you. Please use the question function that you find in your go-to webinar window for asking those questions. We plan to read the questions out loud and then do our best to answer the questions. So now I will jump directly into the first presentation, which deals with one way of getting started with the SDGs. The SDG Impact Assessment Tool. So this tool was developed by the Government Centre for Sustainable Development in close collaboration with the STS in Northern Europe. And I will start with giving some background to the development of the tool. As you might know, we face a number of challenges when implemented the United Nations 2030 agenda. This is an ambitious, comprehensive and complex agenda, and implementing the SDGs requires cooperation at many levels. In the agenda, it is clearly stated that the SDGs are integrated and indivisible. Hence, we need to stop the quite common practice of sheriff picking some specific SDGs and only talk about how we positively contribute to those SDGs. In order to move forward during the next 10 years or so, we have to also identify and address the negative impacts, which our activities, organizations or projects might have. In addition, we really need to stop solving one problem and thereby creating another one. That process is playing whack-a-mole, you know, that popular game that you might encounter on amusement parks. You know, as soon as you hit one of those moles, another one appears and you're supposed to hit that one to make it go away. So, if we solve the implementation of one SDG without considering the other, we have to start all over again. And that's not a good strategy. So, although this is easy said and done, it is a crucial important that we think more broadly and take more than one SDG into consideration into our decisions. We have to treat the SDGs as indivisible and might be impact of our actions to all of them. Lastly, we need to get everybody on board. Although the SDGs are implemented by at a national level, we need to get many different actors and stakeholders in society to act in line with the SDGs if we are to implement them. Of course, governance, authorities and big companies needs to address the SDGs, but we also need small-scale companies, civil society organizations to do so. Of course, it might be difficult for smaller organizations to take on this comprehensive and complex agenda, but this is the aim, actually, of the two. We try to help them doing that. And, of course, we need to do this at a global scale. So, how can we stimulate such a development? Our answer to that question was to build this freely available online tool that provides a structured approach to take on the SDGs, the SDG Impact Assessment Tool. So, this tool enables self-assessments of how your activities, organizations, projects, affect the SDGs. In the process, you identify positive or negative, direct or indirect impacts or lack of knowledge to all of the SDGs. The tool is also an excellent resource, we believe, for learning about the SDGs, their interlinkages between the SDGs and to identify relevant sustainability perspectives of your work. And we have actually started to use the tool on exercises and in project work in university courses here in Sweden to teach sustainable development and the SDGs. And the students have, for example, used the tool to evaluate the scenario for wind power in Sweden. Some other groups have worked with specific companies to evaluate their business models. It's also worth to mention that since the tool was launched about a year ago, it has now over 2,100 users worldwide, including venture capital companies, innovation offices, universities, of course. Smaller companies, sustainability consultants and municipalities. The method we propose when using the tool includes five steps and you see those, I hope, on the screen here. Since the SDGs span a wide competence spectrum, of course, you know, there are 17 of them and they include almost everything in the world. We recommended the first step to gather people with different competencies and perform the SDG Impact Assessment in a workshop format. In step two, you provide a description of the object that you assess and you frame that to what the assessment includes. So this step is actually quite important for the rest of the process. We are frequently seen that users have to go back to this step when they realize that the object of the assessment was not clearly enough formulated. And typical framing questions can be which components should the assessment include? What are the spatial or the temporal limits of the assessment? Who are the actors and stakeholders involved? And are there, for example, any life-cycle perspectives that needs to be included? And one quite important question is, are you doing this assessment in absolute terms or in comparative terms? So, for example, are you comparing to some sort of business as usual scenario? In the third step, where you sort the SDGs, this is simply a way to get the discussion in the workshop group started. It is actually not part of the final assessment, so you shouldn't get stuck on this step. It enables you to do a first quick evaluation if an SDG is relevant at all for the object that you are assessing. And after this step, you can then assess the SDGs in a relevance order, in an order that is relevant for your project. For example, starting with the most relevant SDGs. The actual SDG impact assessment is performed in the fourth step. So I would go into more detail about that in the coming two slides. And given the results of the assessment that you produce, the last step enables you to formulate the strategy to move forward. And as indicated by the arrow at the bottom here in this slide, an SDG impact assessment is normally an iterative process. You might have to go back and complement the assessment as your project develops, when you have learned more, perhaps, if new knowledge has been published. And since you have your SDG impact assessment saved in the database in the tool, it is actually quite easy to do so. You just open the assessment that you have created, and then you update it. So moving on more into detail about the fourth step then. For each of the SDGs, the task here is to categorize the impact from your activity, your organization or project. And this is done in the categories direct negative, indirect negative, no impact, indirect positive, direct positive. Or if there is a knowledge gap, there is more knowledge needed. Indirect impacts can be seen as something that happens as a second step in the causal chain of events. Or perhaps as an impact that happens on one, a direct impact on one SDG that transcends to indirect impact on another SDG. And here the approach is simple, but yet challenging, since you simply select the category by clicking on the screen. But it is challenging because you have to provide a motivation for your categorization. So in this motivation dialogue box, you provide explanations, qualitative and quantitative reasoning, cause-effect relationships, models, actually whatever you want to include. And of course references and support for your assessment. Even though your activity, organizational project potentially can have different impacts on the same SDG. You can actually only select one impact category. So this is deliberately done in this way. It is to encourage you to decide which is the most important impact on that particular SDG. Of course, it is definitely advisable to document all types of impacts in the motivation and also explain why you consider the one selected as most important. But in the end, the tool forces you to reduce complexity and make up your mind about the most important impact. So in this tool, it is actually not about compiling vast amounts of data, run a calculation program and then get an output as some sort of index value, which you then hope to be above or below some threshold value. Instead, it is a tool that provides a structured platform for making self-assessments of SDG impacts and stimulate learning. Of course, you can easily here perform bad assessments. As for any tool, the principle bad input gives bad output applies also here. But I don't think that's the aim of anyone listening here today. As it is a self assessment, the results are naturally dependent on the knowledge and the ambition level of the user. Okay, so moving on. When you have documented the impacts for all the 17 SDGs, you can see a figure of the results as exemplified here in this slide. So this is essentially a map of how your activity organization or project impacts the SDGs. And you see the impact categories to the left here in the picture, the direct positive, indirect positive, no impact and so on from the top to bottom. And the colored icons for the SDGs are then mapped out in the different categories. The knowledge gaps are highlighted or broken out from that figure and highlighted at the bottom. Then given the results that you have produced here. The last step, as I mentioned previously, is to choose your way forward. Which positive, for example, which positive impacts can you strengthen, which negative impacts, can you eliminate or minimize and how can you fill the knowledge gaps that you identified. So we believe that this is a very good starting point actually for a more comprehensible sustainability strategy. I also think that at this point it's important to mention that the tool is not intended to measure the sustainability of your activity organizational projects and compare it to others. Different projects are different and cannot really be compared over 17 dimensions of sustainability. It is neither intended for promoting a company or a product over another, and it is not intended to be the basis of any type of sustainability labeling of companies or products. So to summarize and conclude a bit, we hope that the tool provides a structured approach to get started with the SDGs. We have seen so already. We also hope that it broadens the understanding of the SDGs and their interlinkages. We hope that it stimulates co-learning and co-production between different stakeholders and organizations. Many workshop participants have so far, they have actually emphasized that it was the process of making the impact assessment that was very important and very valuable to them. And remember now that this is a free online resource for all of you to use. There are no fees, there are no membership requirements and no other strings attached. You just go to stgempactassessment.org, you register with an email address, you click on a link in the mail that is provided to you, and then you're good to go. You own your assessments and everything that is written, any materials in that assessment is yours. You don't have to worry about giving your ideas away or anything like that. Not even I or Nina here can read what you write in your assessments. So the material is yours completely. And with that I would like to thank you for your attention. And now we are open for questions. And I think we have around five minutes for questions at this point. So I will now turn to Nina and see if we have any questions from all of you. Hi everyone, Nina Silo here speaking. Yes, Martin, we have a couple of questions actually. Let me see here. Has the assessment tool been used to your knowledge to appraise policy decisions in organizations, not solely focused on sustainability as part of board level decision making process? I actually don't know. You need to mute yourself, Nina, you have done that now. Okay, thank you. I actually don't know if it's been used at the board level, but it has definitely to be used in strategic planning. So for example, the next presentation you will hear about the climate framework for higher education institutions. And Chalmers University of Technology have used the tool to evaluate how their climate strategy will impact all the other SDGs. So the answer is yes, it has been used, but I don't in that manner, but I actually don't know if different boards have used it themselves. Thank you. I have another question here. Is there any support on conducting the assessments? That is of course an excellent question. We have on the website, when you go to the website, you see that we have written, you can click on instructions, you can also click on the about page. And there that you will find some recommendations and guidance on how to do this. We have of course given support in SDS in Northern Europe, we have given support in the activities that we arrange in the workshops that we arrange. But we have not yet launched an online forum for that type of support. But this is an interesting question because that is actually what we are planning to do very soon. Possibly within the SDS and network to arrange, for example, a mobilized group where people can post questions and give recommendations and help each other. Thank you, Martin. We have a couple of more questions until we have to move on. We have a comment here. Wonderful tool. Congratulations. Do you believe such a tool could be useful for individuals to gain a better sense of the SDGs? Sure. Definitely. When I say it is a tool that we recommend to use in your workshop format, we still recommend that. But definitely if you want to, you can just open it up, play around with it and reason how your daily life essentially or just vegetarian lunch or cycling to work or any activity that you can think of will impact the SDGs. And it's only a platform for getting those ideas started, you can say. And surely, I think that we have actually done such exercises too. And people, even though it might be a very simple thing that they're evaluating, it definitely is gratifying and you always learn something from it. So sure, definitely. Go ahead. Thank you. Last question also related to that same topic. Can we use the SDD impact assessment tool to assess, for example, infrastructure projects, like renewable energy, roads, hospitals, etc.? Definitely. Yes, it's the answer to that question. But I think it's important here to emphasize that the step where you frame the object of assessment becomes very important. Because if you think about a very big project or a large organization, like you wouldn't be able to do an SDG impact assessment on IKEA or a big company or something like that. Because they have so many different operations and so many different products. So you probably need to frame the assessment quite carefully, perhaps divided into several different assessments. I don't have enough information right now to be able to answer that question in a better way. But I think that you would need to carefully see whether it is supposed to be one larger assessment or if you divide it into several ones. Thank you, Martin. I think that's all for now and we have to move on. Yes, sure. Martin, can I just jump in very quickly? Because we did receive a lot of questions from our audience on this very interesting tool. So I just wanted to make sure that everybody knows where to find you guys of SDS and Northern Europe. So please just feel free to get in touch with the team at SDS and Northern Europe through their social media channels. They are very active and I'm sure you will be able to get in touch with both Martin and Nina if you wish to do so. Either on Twitter or Facebook or on their website on SDS and Northern Europe. Thank you. Definitely. We are always open for more questions and discussions.