About the NPOS Project
NPOS is a research project bridging the Geography Research Unit and the Martti Ahtisaari Institute and Oulu Business School, at the University of Oulu, Finland.
“Nature-positive” is not a marketing phrase. It is a measurable goal: that the net effect of economic activity on biodiversity and ecosystem health is positive, not merely neutral or less harmful than before.
2023 – July 2026
Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland
Energy, ICT, Construction
Mixed-methods
An academic research project and a regional engagement initiative.
The Nature-Positive Northern Ostrobothnia (NPOS) project is a research initiative that sits between the Geography Research Unit and the Martti Ahtisaari Institute at Oulu Business School, University of Oulu.
The project studies how businesses in Northern Ostrobothnia can transition toward nature-positive practices — moving beyond reducing their environmental harm to actively restoring and enhancing the natural systems on which all economic activity ultimately depends.
NPOS works directly with companies, municipalities, and regional development actors across the three key sectors of the Northern Ostrobothrian economy: energy, ICT, and construction, producing peer-reviewed publications and a master's thesis.
Bridging two distinct research environments.
This dual positioning is intentional and essential. Nature-positive business transition cannot be understood from either a purely environmental or a purely business perspective alone. NPOS sits at that intersection — which is precisely where the most important and least-studied questions live.
Geography Research Unit
Providing the environmental and spatial analytical grounding — ecosystem mapping, landscape-level biodiversity analysis, and the regional ecological context that shapes what nature-positive means in a boreal Finnish setting.
Martti Ahtisaari Institute
Providing the business strategy, multi-capital, and sustainability management frameworks through Oulu Business School, by which companies are studied and supported in their transition.
From description to explanation to prescription.
The NPOS research is structured around three core questions that guide the analytical trajectory of the project.
To what extent are companies in Northern Ostrobothnia currently engaging in nature-positive actions, and how can this engagement be conceptualised through a multi-capital systems lens?
What are the key drivers, barriers, and enablers of nature-positive business transformation — at both the organisational and the ecosystem level?
How do companies vary in readiness, practices, and perceived benefits across sectors and company sizes — and what does this imply for targeted regional support?
Four Sequential Phases
NPOS follows a sequential mixed-methods design. Each phase builds on the last: the conceptual model developed in Phase 0 is stress-tested by qualitative interviews in Phase 1, extended to the ecosystem level in Phase 2, and quantitatively validated in Phase 3.
Conceptualisation
171 studies reviewedA semi-structured literature review of 171 peer-reviewed studies produced the six-capitals multi-capital systems model that anchors the entire research programme. This phase established the theoretical framework: the footprint–handprint distinction, the six-capitals integration logic, and the two-loop dynamics (operational loop and handprint loop) that explain why some companies accelerate on nature-positive practice while others plateau.
Qualitative Interviews
21 senior leadersTwenty-one semi-structured interviews with senior executives, sustainability managers, and operational leaders across the energy, ICT, and construction sectors. Interviews explored leadership commitment, capital integration, innovation practice, stakeholder relationships, regulatory experience, and barriers to handprint adoption. The qualitative data grounds the conceptual model in the lived reality of Northern Ostrobothrian business.
Ecosystem Workshop
9 organisationsA participatory workshop with nine organisations using the Ecosystem Pie Model (EPM). Participants mapped their value exchanges with other regional actors and collectively reflected on the coordination gaps that prevent nature-positive value from flowing across the regional economy. This phase extends the analysis from the individual company to the business ecosystem level.
Company Survey
50 companiesA 35-item structured survey instrument administered to 50 companies in Northern Ostrobothnia via two collection modes (email and in-person at a regional business event). The survey operationalises the seven core constructs of the NPOS framework — responsible leadership, multi-capital integration, sustainability reporting, innovation and circularity, stakeholder engagement, handprint adoption, and green finance — and analyses them using descriptive statistics, Cronbach's reliability analysis, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney nonparametric tests, Spearman correlations, and exploratory OLS regression.
Nine Core Research Objectives
Each objective represents a key study pillar and functions as a gateway to our findings. Click on an objective to expand and access direct links to the full research-based articles.
We measured leadership commitment across 50 companies and found genuine strategic intent (mean 4.00 / 5) alongside a stark implementation gap: 72.5% call sustainability strategic, but only 17.6% have a dedicated budget to act on it. This objective examines where the will to lead exists — and what stops it from becoming operational investment.
Using a six-capitals framework (financial, manufactured, intellectual, human, social, natural), we quantified how each capital type is integrated into strategic planning. Financial capital scored 4.20; natural capital scored 3.16 — a gap of more than a full point that reveals the structural blind spot at the heart of current business strategy in the region.
Handprint — going beyond reducing harm to actively restoring nature — scored 2.80 / 5, the lowest substantive construct in the survey, yet it is the defining feature of genuine nature-positive business. Our regression analysis found that operational innovation, not leadership attitude, is the strongest predictor of handprint adoption. This objective maps the pathway.
Green finance scored 1.80 / 5 — the single lowest item across all 35 survey questions, with 80% of respondents giving it the minimum score. Yet green finance is the mechanism that could translate leadership commitment into transformation-scale investment. This objective diagnoses why uptake is near-zero and identifies three interventions that would change it.
68.6% of surveyed companies rate measuring non-financial performance as difficult (mean 4.02 — the second-highest single item in the survey). This is not a technical inconvenience: it is the structural bottleneck that simultaneously blocks natural capital integration, green finance access, and credible handprint claims. Solving it unlocks progress across all other dimensions.
The EU regulatory landscape for nature-positive business has shifted dramatically since 2020. For some companies, new sustainability requirements function as a forcing function that clarifies priorities and builds the internal business case for investment. For SMEs without dedicated compliance staff, the same frameworks risk becoming a burden that crowds out operational ambition. This objective maps that tension and asks what better-designed regulation looks like.
A nature-positive energy company looks different from a nature-positive construction firm or an ICT company with significant data infrastructure. Through 21 sector-specific interviews and comparative survey analysis across three sectors, this objective develops distinct transition pathways — identifying the material opportunities, barriers, and realistic starting points for each.
Through a participatory ecosystem mapping workshop with nine organisations using the Ecosystem Pie Model (EPM), this objective maps how nature-positive value currently flows — and fails to flow — across the Northern Ostrobothrian economy. It identifies the coordination gaps preventing collective action and proposes the institutional architecture needed to close them: shared data infrastructure, circular materials brokering, and green finance facilitation.
Most nature-positive business research comes from central Europe or North America. Northern Ostrobothnia — with its boreal peatland and forest ecosystems, its SME-dominated economy, and its distinctive Finnish institutional context — offers a critically underrepresented case. This objective documents what makes the region analytically distinctive and draws out the lessons that travel to other boreal and northern contexts internationally.
Funding and Steering Group
Supported by regional and European funds, NPOS connects academic research directly with municipal development, policy leaders, and regional builders.
NPOS is funded by Pohjois-Pohjanmaan liitto (Regional Council of North Ostrobothnia) through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under the EURA 2021 programme framework. Additional support is provided by the Kvantum Institute at the University of Oulu. The project runs from 2023 to July 2026.
The NPOS project is guided by a steering group drawn from key regional organisations in Northern Ostrobothnia. The steering group provides strategic oversight, connects the project to regional business and policy communities, and ensures the research remains grounded in the real needs and conditions of the region.
Project Researchers
A directory of the NPOS research team, bridging business and spatial analysis with profile and contact links.