Almedalen: Embracing sustainability

During the past years, sustainability and climate actions have been big themes at Almedalsveckan. This summer, the atmosphere was more optimistic than ever before.

In this blog series, we visit the world-famous Nordic societal platforms and join the debate on our societies’ future. Miltton’s experts will report from Naantali 24h, Almedalsveckan, SuomiAreena and the Arvamus Festival.

Almedalen

Almedalsveckan has been an important part of my summer plans for the past four years. I have colleagues who have visited this societal platform 15 to 25 times, and I can see why.

The open, polite and intellectual discussions about the future of our society, combining business, politics, technology and saving the world-mentality in the medieval old-town of Visby, is a heady combination.

The reason why we keep coming back is that Almedalsveckan is able to evolve and stay relevant year after year. It is designed not just to inform your stakeholders, but to actually invite them to have a dialogue with you and find answers together. As a result, Almedalsveckan is an accelerator for political thinking, technological innovations, methods for fighting climate change, building networks, challenging existing structures and much more.

For example, the transformation in how we discuss about sustainability issues and climate change has developed dramatically. In 2016, the focus was either on theorising the issues or defining restrictive and regulative actions.

This summer, there was a new kind of spirit. It seems that politicians, academia, activists and companies have had a collective revelation that we can actually solve this if we just want to. From a business point of view, this means that instead of getting lectures and bashing from NGOs, they can focus on how to make sustainability the driver for commercial growth.

Almedalsveckan has an impressive list of participants from key cornerstones of our society. It is very exciting and also relieving to see these people optimistic and focused on problem-solving. Hopefully, we can find this zeitgeist also in SuomiAreena and Arvamus later this summer.

Jan Westö, director, Miltton Oy

The everlasting light of the Nordic summer nights inspire us – politicians, journalists, civil servants, activists and business representatives – to discuss where our societies are going, via the world-famous Nordic societal platforms.

Being part of this debate has always been at the core of Miltton. This summer, we want to share the insights, issues and ideas with all our stakeholders.

Tune in for blogs from Naantali 24h, Almedalsveckan, SuomiAreena and the Arvamus Festival to learn about the debate that will shape our societies’ future. Is this summer the defining moment for Europe? We are here to find out.