On the monumental staircase that leads to the colonnade of the Finnish parliament in Helsinki, a group of seniors face another cold and rainy day, with colorful mantises and neon safety vests.
Many banners, in Finnish, Swedish, German, but also in French, read “Grandparents for climate action” and “stop fossil burning”.
As they do every week, they come to demand firmer action to fight climate change, but also a more eco-responsible management of forests, in this country where the forest industry generates more than 83,000 jobs and represents 17 per cent of exports.
A few months ago, Quebec signed an agreement to learn Finnish “forest management methods,” because the industry here is in crisis because of U.S. tariffs.
Is Finnish forestry an inspiring model to replicate?
“Not at the moment,” replies Päivi Härkönen, a granny in a beret well pushed in, so as not to give in to the Baltic gusts of wind that rush into the vast esplanade and the boulevard in front of the parliament.
The Finnish forest suffers from overexploitation, explains this woman, who was appointed by her classmates to give this unannounced interview.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland has closed its border with its dangerous neighbour and has therefore stopped sourcing wood from it.
As a result, companies harvest more local wood, more than the forest’s ability to regenerate, according to Greenpeace Finland – an analysis disputed by the industry.
Härkönen describes the reality of living at her lakeside cottage, so common for many Finns.
“Large areas have been opened up for logging, heavy rains caused by climate change are causing runoff, and sediment is ending up in lakes.”
Water quality was known to be exceptional in what is known as “the land of a thousand lakes,” but the situation has deteriorated.
“Our lakes used to be clear,” she says.
“Our cottage is on the edge of a small lake, and now the water is brownish. The whole ecosystem of the lake will change for the worse.”
In the inner courtyard of an old brick industrial building in the capital, on the ground floor, you can access a large room, where several people work.
The smell of a warmed dish spreads through the centre of the room, where an orange sofa, Greenpeace campaign posters, etc.
Juha Aromaa welcomes us in a small room, a kind of living room, with a coffee table and… a bunk bed.
“It’s to accommodate volunteer activists from other regions who come to help us,” explains the head of communications for the environmental organization.
It paints a rather bleak picture of Finnish forestry.
“You are welcome, but don’t take our forestry industry as a model,” says the spokesman, a veteran of the cause, a calm man with a slow flow who looks like a first-generation CEGEP teacher.
The “Declaration of Intent” signed between Quebec and Finland last August invites the two partners to “promote exchanges and cooperation” in sectors such as strategies and initiatives “for the adaptation and mitigation of climate change in the forest sector.”
But the environmental record of Finnish forestry is disastrous in the eyes of Greenpeace.
New factories have put a lot of pressure on the resource, a monoculture of spruce and pine. The industry is making low-value-added products, trees are growing more slowly because of climate change, while more are being harvested.
“The industry is devouring the resource,” says Aromaa.
Forestry in Finland has therefore been a net emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs) since 2018, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In other words, forests have become more of a “source” than a “carbon sink”: they absorb less than the industry produces in total.
“It’s rather unbelievable,” says the man who laments “intensive logging. We cut more quickly than the forest can absorb in GHGs.”
There are solutions, he maintains.
But political will is needed, in a system where the majority of woodlots are in the hands of 600,000 private owners who want yield – out of a population of just 5.7 million, which gives an idea of the size and political strength of this group.
Greenpeace first proposes to increase the areas of protected areas (to 13 per cent currently, compared to 16 per cent in Quebec), particularly on public lands in the North, which would have the consequence, among other things, of increasing the value of other territories where harvesting can be done, the plots of small private landowners.
Aromaa then suggests compensating landowners more generously who choose to preserve their forest for carbon capture.
“The owners would therefore be winners,” he pleads.
But the losers? The three giants of the forestry industry are Metsä Group, Stora Enso, and UPM.
“They have to change their business model and increase the value of their products, build furniture, prefabricated houses, etc. We can’t be the world’s pasta producers.”
According to him, it is also necessary to set, within the framework of a carbon market, a price to be paid by the company for the carbon released by the use of the product, such as cardboard, toilet paper, etc.
“But it takes political courage,” he admits.
And now, bridges are being cut with Finland’s ruling centre-right government.
“With this government, perhaps for the first time, we don’t see any possibility of finding a solution; it is very right-wing.”
On the other side of the House, there is the Green Party. Jenni Pitko is the Member of Parliament for a northeastern constituency of Oulu, where forestry is present, and chair of the Parliamentary Committee on the Environment.
His grandfather worked in a pulp and paper mill, his father was even a mill manager.
She knows the essential contribution of forestry in Finland, but calls for a major shift.
“Nature is not doing well at the moment, ecosystems are threatened,” she said in an interview with parliament. The forest has been overexploited in recent decades.”
She deplores the fact that half of the timber harvest is currently used as fuel in thermal power plants, as a substitute for Russian hydrocarbons, instead of making greater use of green energy.
And all those peatlands that have been drained to expand forest areas, and that used to play an indispensable role in ecosystems, water sanitation and rainfall absorption, need to be restored.
“It was a big mistake (to drain the peatlands), we know that now,” Pitko said. Lake Päivi Härkönen has also suffered from this.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
