Valuable state forests and municipal
forests must be protected

The biodiversity of our nature, which is being pushed into distress by the pressure of made-made climate change and land use, can only be preserved by protecting sufficient and diverse forests evenly across Finland, in every province.

While forests are valuable habitats and havens for life, many of them also have significant social, recreational and cultural significance for local communities. Although biodiversity is most diverse in our increasingly rarer natural forests, forests with a history of forest management can also be worth protecting for local ecosystems and communities.

We must commit to international conservation agreements

Finland is committed to the EU Biodiversity Strategy and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, according to which 30% of land and sea areas must be protected to ensure biodiversity, and 10% must be strictly protected. In addition, the Finnish Nature Panel and the EU Biodiversity Strategy separately outline that all remaining old-growth and natural forests must be protected 1.

According to environmental organizations, less than a tenth of the total forest area in Finland and Sápmi, are natural forests. A significant portion of these are still unprotected and under threat of logging, as Luonnonmetsätyöryhmä’s (the Natural Forest Working Group's) mapping work shows 2. Meeting the strict 10% protection target alone requires a significant increase in protected forest area, 3, according to the Ministry of the Environment, this would be approximately 500,000 hectares of state land. 4. According to the Nature Panel's estimate, there are at least over 800,000 hectares of unprotected natural forests throughout Finland. 5.

The total number of forests with an unbroken succession of deadwood despite forest management must be determined in the coming years. The measures to increase the protected area recorded in the agreements must be extended to these so-called succession forests in addition to natural forests.

Logging levels should be calculated to be sustainable

The forest industry, which is investing in giant pulp mills, has in recent years cut down almost everything it can from our native forests. In many regions, the logging volumes have been unsustainably high, not only ecologically and climatically, but also from the point of view of the continuity of the industry's own wood production 6.

Ecological sustainability
distant, but achievable

Ecologically sustainable logging levels refer to limiting the amount of logging in commercial forests to a level where the loss of wood does not threaten to weaken the overall state of the environment. Climate-sustainable logging levels are levels that maintain the carbon sequestration capacity and carbon stock of commercial forests as high as possible. The provincial-specific limitation of the total amount of logging that we require would prioritize ecological and climatic needs and still leave room for forest industry operations within the boundaries.

According to research, a more sustainable logging level from the perspective of living beings and which regenerates carbon sinks, is tens of millions of cubic meters smaller than the logging level which has been in recent years approximately 70-80 million cubic meters. Sampo Soimakallio, a researcher at the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), has estimated 7 that a maximum of 55–65 million cubic meters should be logged from our forests annually, so that the carbon sink and carbon stock do not decrease and Finland achieves its climate goals.