Finnish forest sector has experience in environmental issues; after all, it faced the questions first in Finland. The discussion about emission and waste waters was active in 1970’s and 1980’s. In forestry biodiversity become a topic in the 1990’s.

“The Finnish forest sector has met these challenges extremely well, after first recovering from the shock,” estimates Permanent Secretary, Ms. Sirkka Hautojärvi from the Ministry of Environment. “The environmental challenges have been turned into sector’s victory. Examples of these are the water purification and sulphur extraction techniques used.”

The production of Finnish paper and board industry tripled between 1970 and 2005. At the same time the amount of suspended solids in and the biological oxygen demand of waste waters have decreased into less than five percent of what they were in 1970. The pulp production has increased by a million tonne since 1980 but sulphur emissions have decreased by 90 percent.

Forestry has as well assumed new forest management practises very quickly, Hautojärvi says, even though there have been conflicts along the way.

“Finnish forest industry’s environmental know-how in technology as in process management is exportable. In forestry the same can be said about the systems used to track roundwood, the so-called chain-of-custody systems.”

Previously faltering dialogue works
Hautojärvi does not hesitate to say that the dialogue between forest and environmental organisations has occasionally been bad. Things have, however, changed. “Currently the dialogue works even though the parties might disagree on issues.”

She says that the participatory planning which has been used in Finnish forestry for a long time is an example of a working dialogue. The state forestry enterprise Metsähallitus has been the pioneer in implementing it.

Demand for forest ”products” to increase
Hautojärvi believes that the environmental boom, or increasingly focusing on environmental issues, will gather force. It will lead to increasing pressure on forest resources from forestry, recreation, nature tourism, conservation and other environmental services. An example of a new environmental service is the carbon sequestration a forest provides.

“The demand for all these “products” will rise. It means that also the possibilities for conflicts can rise if issues are not handled well,” Hautojärvi cautions.

To prevent future conflicts, cross-sectoral discussion is needed. Hautojärvi considers the Renewable Resources – Sustainable Future -seminar which the Finnish Forest Association organised and Finnish forest sector funded last week as a good example of it. The invitation-only seminar gathered together over 40 European decision-makers and opinion leaders to discuss natural resources and their function in the future.

“The role of natural resources will be more marked in the future as their utilization has exceeded their supply. We will have to change this course and in achieving that, renewable resources have a significant role. We have to get more out of less,” Hautojärvi says.

Lack of knowledge hinders discussion
According to Hautojärvi, dialogue, research and innovations are needed now to form a basis for policy.

Existing information is not enough. For example, the share of wood of the materials used by the European building industry is not known. Major part of the seminar participants admitted that they knew less about natural resources than they had assumed.

The discussion of the utilization of natural resources is demanding for those involved – politicians, researchers, the professionals of various sectors. Political decisions are based on the available information and in the European Union decisions influencing forestry and forest industry are made in several sectors.

”Things are changing fast. Currently we are discussing into which direction we want to move in the utilization of natural resources, what is the “right” or “good” way to use non-renewable and renewable natural resources,” Hautojärvi says.

By Krista Kimmo



Renewable Resources - Sustainable Future -seminar's homepage
The Ministry of Environment