Bending, but not breaking

25 Mai Bending, but not breaking

The title: Bending, but not breaking
2021

Authors: Anna Mauranen, Eva-Mari Aro, Riitta Hari, Sirpa Jalkanen, Markku Kulmala, Arto Mustajoki, Risto Nieminen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Kari Raivio, Jorma Sipilä, Kirsi Tirri, Pekka Aula, Jaakko Kuosmanen and Rosa Rantanen
Main themes: The statement presents views on Finland’s crisis resilience based on the lessons learned from the coronavirus pandemic crisis, with the goal of a strong and resilient Finland. The statement looks further into the future, rather than focusing on the short-term recovery from the current crisis. The statement invites us to discuss ways of improving crisis resilience at the individual, community and societal levels.
Nature of publication: Statement

During the pandemic crisis, cooperation between the scientific community and the state has been successful in many ways, but fast-paced co-operation between scientific advisors and decision-makers, in particular, needs to be improved to prepare for unexpected situations. It is essential to keep up strong basic research across a wide range of disciplines, as there are a wide variety of potential crises and we cannot predict what kind of information will be the most important when the time comes. What we do know for sure is that up-to-date, reliable and research-based information is needed, whatever the crisis. This time, vaccine research was invested in quickly and generously, through international collaboration. Still, the pandemic crisis has once again shown that understanding human and community behaviour is essential to the management of any crisis, which means that the humanities and, more generally, versatile research, form the basis for controlled and effective decision-making. The scientific community is international by nature, and it has demonstrated the strengths this brings by finding solutions to the global pandemic crisis. The world is tightly intertwined – economically, politically and environmentally – and these factors, in turn, are closely interconnected.