Environmental technology and regional sustainability – The role of life-based design

Environmental technology provides useful tools for enhancing regional sustainability. The successful development and adoption of new technologies, however, requires a model which includes social elements. We argue that an optimal technology platform for regional sustainability is constructed by using life-based design, i.e. a design where the requirements of the users, of the local human culture, are taken into account. Our argument is illustrated by means of a case study, where we investigated how Finnish farmers in the Karjaanjoki River catchment area adopted new environmental technologies, and how they adapted these technologies to their specific ways of life. We conclude by proposing that in order to effectively promote regional sustainability, environmental technologies should be construed as elements of social processes, in which their life-based design features are actualized in their adoption.