During the two-year dialogue process with Finnish Association of Nature Conservation (FANC) and WWF Finland Metsähallitus, the body responsible for state forestry in Finland, and the ENGOs reached an agreement that 35,000 hectares of productive forest land are protected. In addition to this, Metsähallitus decided to protect some 25,000 disputable hectares with its own decision. All 100,000 hectares will be protected permanently. A significant share of the area has also previously been under restrictions of use.

Initially the target of the process was to complete the results of the old-growth forests protection programme dating back to the 1990’s. As a result of that programme, a total of 293,000 hectares were strictly protected. In addition to this, the nature values of some 35,300 hectares were to be safeguarded by landscape-ecological planning. The ENGOs were not satisfied with this and, due to their heavy criticism, a new dialogue started in April 2003. Taking into consideration the 35,300 hectares area already covered by landscape-ecological planning, the dialogue process resulted to much larger protection as was predicted. The protection decision is based on the criteria accepted by the parties in the process.

All in all 70 meetings within two years
There has been heavy criticism against the fact that all other stakeholders but the two ENGOs were initially excluded from the process. Because of this Metsähallitus organised five larger stakeholder meetings where all those willing could participate. Also these discussions have been taken into account, says Metsähallitus.

All in all there were 70 meetings during the process. Initially it was decided that the discussions shall concern only the areas which the ENGOs defined by maps in the beginning of the process, and all sites with a few exceptions of these maps were dealt with at least once during the process. Consensus was reached concerning two out of three areas.

Due to the protection decision, the annual timber market in Northern Finland will diminish for 150,000 cubic meters. Out of this 45 per cent is stout timber. Should other elements remain stable in the market this would lead to a loss of 70 jobs directly in forestry and 200 in the whole forest sector.

The demands grew during the process
While the ecological results of the process were a positive surprise, others were not. The dialogue didn’t remain in a status which was initially accepted with the ENGOs. There were two main reasons to this: in addition to the original and jointly accepted maps, the ENGOs constantly brought new areas into the process. In the end the demands of the ENGOs exceeded the areas of the landscape-ecological planning based on the original old-growth forest protection programmes, 38,000 hectares, with 2, or even 2.5 times.

The demands of the ENGOs were based almost solely on old-growth forest protection. The additional ecological benefit of further protection would have been rather small. According to an independent and international evaluation carried out by leading ecologists in Finland the landscape-ecological planning of Metsähallitus concentrated too much on the ecological sustainability on the expense of social and economic sustainability, and as far as ecological sustainability was concerned, too much on old-growth forests on the expense of other biotopes of the boreal forests. Fulfilling the demands of the ENGOs would have led to an even more distorted situation.

Dialogue brought no peace in forestry
Neither was there any peace in Finnish forestry during the process. What was most surprising, however was that not only Greenpeace made constant attacks on Finnish forestry, but so did also those participating the dialogue, some even personally. There were constant and false arguments by Greenpeace that Metsähallitus is logging the last remaining ancient forests in Europe – even in Finnish Lapland there are already 500,000 hectares of over 150 years old forests strictly protected – but also a representative of FANC, who participated in the dialogue personally, gave her official support to a demonstration held by Greenpeace in Rome. She was there as a member of the official delegation of Finland in FAO. FANC also gave its support to the campaign of Greenpeace in Upper Lapland.

Heavy criticism from other stakeholders
It was decided in the beginning of the process, that it should be carried out within one year. The deadline has since postponed twice and there have been suggestions that it should be done at least once more. It is also clear that it is impossible to go on making decisions of state-owned lands with a limited group like this.

Other stakeholders of Metsähallitus have expressed their concern over the dialogue several times. Maybe the strongest demonstration was a letter to Metsähallitus sent by representatives from over a hundred sawmills in Northern Finland. They stated their concern over the lack of stout timber in Northern Finland, where the share of protected forests already is the highest in the whole Europe. Also private family forest owners have expressed their concern: if there will be shutdowns of sawmills, they won’t buy any wood from family forest owners neither.

All loggings of Metsähallitus, including the sites, amounts and practices used, are decided in Natural Resource Planning process where all local stakeholders participate. In addition to this even all willing individual citizens have the right to participate.

By Hannes Mäntyranta