Biodiversity, Climate Change and Finnish Forest Regulation

Abstract

Forests are vital for the protection of biodiversity in Finland as well as playing an important role in climate change mitigation. This chapter analyses how current Finnish regulation takes these issues into account and whether there are regulatory instruments to make positive changes towards ecologically sustainable forest management. Existing legislation includes biodiversity protection means that date back to 1990‘s, whereby soft law and voluntary protection measures are still highly emphasized in Finnish forest policy. This, however, has been insufficient to halt biodiversity decline over the last 20 years and the situation is becoming more critical due to the increasing amounts of logging in Finland. According to current legislation, restricting the amount of annual logging is not possible in Finland as existing statutes only place restrictions on logging in certain protected areas and habitats. Many of the forest governance instruments such as subsidies and forest planning encourage an increase in forest logging, while few measures enhance biodiversity or water protection. Even if the state of biodiversity is better in Finland than in most of the other EU countries, significant improvements should be enacted in forest governance to halt biodiversity decline and make forestry truly sustainable.