Sustainability at the National Land Survey of Finland

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The National Land Survey of Finland’s (NLS) vision We know the Earth – we secure the future guides our sustainability activities. Sustainability is part of the NLS’s strategic goals.

In our operations, we promote the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and Finland’s goals. We strive for sustainable development that secures good living opportunities for current and future generations.

We want to lead the way towards a sustainable future and also inspire others to provide data and solutions for the needs of a sustainable society. We are happy to discuss good practices and experiences and to share ideas about them.

Sustainability goals

Our sustainability goals are based on our strategic goals and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We work for ecological, social and economic sustainability, as well as good governance.

The Responsibility for the Earth sustainability programme sets goals for our work. The programme outlines key goals and operating methods for the strategy period until 2030. We have selected an indicator and a targeted end result for each sustainability goal.

Our sustainability goals are:

  • We provide reliable uninterrupted services
  • We provide reliable uninterrupted services for everyone
  • We produce data, research results and innovation for the needs of a sustainable society and others
  • We reduce our carbon footprint and adapt to the impact of climate change in our activities
  • We are a prosperous workplace in which everyone feels comfortable as who they are under high-quality management
  • We use our resources profitably and responsibly 

Acts of sustainability

We advance our sustainability goals through concrete acts of sustainability. The acts of sustainability increase the societal handprint of our work and reduce the footprint caused by our operations.

The acts of sustainability are concrete measures that help achieve our sustainability goals. We select new acts of sustainability every year. We carry out and manage the selected acts of sustainability as part of our regular activities and the fulfilment of our strategy.

Our aim is to promote 50 acts of sustainability by the end of 2027. Once this goal has been achieved, we will continue to select new acts each year.

Acts of sustainability 2025

  • We will develop proactive risk management and promote the uniform reporting and processing of safety non-conformities by increasing the personnel’s awareness of agreed practices (2025).
  • We will improve the headings used on our website to make the website more accessible using a screen reader (2025).
  • We will prepare the new period of the national laser scanning and aerial photography programme to produce more accurate information for an expanding cooperation network and for the needs of a sustainable society. Cooperation with partners saves tax assets, reduces emissions and enables research, products and services for the needs of a sustainable society (2025).
  • We will create a data collection model that helps us better monitor what UN SDGs we are promoting through our research. In the future, the model will help us identify the goals that we will promote heavily, as well as any goals that would possibly require us to make more significant investments. We will also use the model to monitor the fulfilment of our research strategy (2025).
  • In land consolidation, we will promote the implementation of five ILMASTO (CLIMATE) pilot sites. Through land acquisition under the CLIMATE pilot, we can support, for example, afforestation, the restoration of peat fields, the establishment of wetlands, and the implementation of water management solutions. The aim is to assign poorly productive land and other areas to uses that best protect the climate and the environment through the government’s land acquisitions. We will cooperate with the Centres for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment (2025).
  • We will calculate the NLS’s carbon footprint and use it to identify key measures (2024–2025). 
  • We will establish a group to promote equality and non-discrimination in our working community (2025).
  • We will implement the national recommendation for responsible researcher evaluation in researcher recruitment. The fundamental principles of responsible researcher evaluation are transparency, integrity, equity, competence and diversity. Good practices are related to the creation of the evaluation process, the evaluation of research, the diversity of researchers’ tasks, and researchers’ involvement in the evaluation (2025).
  • We will encourage each location, as well as each responsibility area and department, to increase the sense of community through at least one concrete action. We will share the action taken and good experiences with each other. In a multi-location working community and the challenging financial situation, the need for a new type of a sense of community is emphasised (2025).
  • We will ensure the production of digital services in a customer-driven, sustainable and effective manner by identifying key skills that our personnel must have. At the same time, we will identify the skills that can be acquired from external service providers (2025).

Policy commitments 

Agenda 2030

The UN Agenda 2030

The UN Agenda 2030 and the SDGs provide a frame of reference for our activities. We have identified five key UN SDGs that we will advance through our strategic goals. With our research, we can contribute to all UN SDGs. 

Best practices at NLS

To ensure the realisation of a lawful and sustainable operating culture, we have collected the best practices at the NLS to an institution-wide programme. We contribute to a functioning and transparent public administration and produce even better services at the same time.

Best Practices at NLS publication (PDF)

Our other key commitments

Sustainability reporting

We will report our sustainability activities annually using the guidelines for sustainability reporting in the central government and referring to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards.