Defining alternative national-scale socio-economic and technological futures up to 2100: SRES scenarios for the case of Finland

The basic ideas of scenario planning are to provide analyses of potential future trends and the preparations for the changes brought about by those future trends. Thus the FINSKEN project has developed new integrated scenarios that analyse the potential changes in environmental and socio-economic factors for Finland in the 21st century. This article provides long-run socio-economic scenarios for Finland as a contribution to the FINSKEN project. Its aim is to present and analyse future scenarios of Finland's population and economic development, as well as to apply relevant technological and social foresight studies approaches. In this article, four tailored storylines and worlds of future development are presented for Finland. These are related to the scenarios of the Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The storylines are based on expert interviews and material from official and expert documents. In addition, the authors operationalise the four storylines for the Finnish economy using the International Futures (IFs) for Terra world model. Furthermore, empirical results and model runs concerning the economic and social long-run transition paths of the Finnish economy are presented.