Sustainability in focus at top political event

In 1968, Sweden’s soon-to-be Prime Minister, Olof Palme gave an impromptu speech in Almedalen, an area in medieval town Visby, located on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. Since then, ‘Almedalen Week’ – a democratic meeting place for everyone, held at the end of June each year – has grown into the most influential political annual event in Sweden.

Imagine a big trade convention with stages, speeches, seminars, panel discussions, roundtables, networking events and one-to-one meetings. Now, multiply this with 100 – and set it in a complete town area where the restaurants, hotels, businesses, people’s homes and gardens, walking areas and parks make the stages and discussion venues.

There are around 3,000 open events visited by politicians, organisations, companies, academia, and anyone who wants to learn, discuss and network. Typically, around 35,000 people visit Almedalen Week every year. For many participants, it is an opportunity to market themselves or lobby progression of a topic.

In the past years, Sustainability has been the most popular topic for the events. This year was no exception. About 25% of all public events featured Sustainability in some way, with Security being the second most popular theme. Maybe not so surprising given the geopolitical status in Europe and with Sweden recently joining NATO.

Resilient and sustainable digital infrastructure was the topic for a panel discussion I was invited to, hosted by Sweco, Europe’s leading architecture and engineering consultancy. The ever-changing threat landscape requires security measures on all levels, and the panel agreed that there is no “one security solution” to manage all threats. To succeed, we need to support and learn from each other.

My view is that IT Security is really a Sustainability topic, since it is crucial for accessibility to information and communication. My fellow panelist, Mary Prokhorova from Ukrainian security company IndevLab, shared how the war has changed the company’s IT infrastructure and security measures. Knowledge about the origins of the threats is key to a good defense.

My top 3 takeaways from Almedalen 2024:

• Critical infrastructure. A lot of focus was dedicated to long-term planning for sufficient capacity, resilience and on the green transformation for infrastructure. Both physical infrastructure such as railways and roads, but also digital infrastructure.
• AI. How can we advance AI innovation and development in a secure manner? And how can the business community and politicians collaborate to facilitate changes needed to drive this? The Tech community warns that speed is not enough, and that the political community needs to do more to facilitate and remove obstacles.
• Collaboration. As our society faces a multitude of challenges affecting humanity, such as war, climate change, and biodiversity losses, it is clear that the ability to focus on several challenges – from different perspectives in the same frame – needs a high level of collaboration. In the business community, academia, politics and the civil society.

Sharing some tips:

What does Arelion do on Sustainability? Please see Arelion’s Sustainability pages (or get in touch 😊)

Are you interested in learning more about DDoS attacks and mitigations? Check out the Arelion DDoS threat landscape report 2024

Did you miss Almedalen week? You can view some of the seminars at Almedalen Play (most are in Swedish, though)

Sandra Klackenborn, Head of Sustainability and ESG