ENVIRONMENT-FINLAND: Activists Fight On to Save Forests

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Mark Waller

HELSINKI, May 9 2003 (IPS) - The long-awaited verdict in the trial of 13 Greenpeace activists charged with disrupting forest logging in the Kainuu region of east Finland was postponed this week until mid-August.

The verdict in the case could challenge Finland’s squeaky clean reputation as a leader in forest and biodiversity protection. The case has dragged on since 1999.

The case centres on preservation of forest 60 or more years old that is home to diverse plant and animal species. Conservationists regard this old-growth forest as among the last reserves of biodiversity in northern Europe.

Of about 20,000 forest species found in Finland, but not unique to it, about 1,000 are listed as threatened with extinction.

Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, Friends of the Earth and the Finnish Nature Protection League argue that biodiversity is threatened because the forest industry continues to log old-growth areas.

Forestry giants Stora Enso and UPM-Kymmene, the state sector and small companies manage commercial use of more than 90 per cent of the forests that cover about three-quarters of Finland.

"We put about 300,000 hectares of forest under protection in the late nineties," says Hannu Jokinen, director of forestry at the Forest and Park Service. "Biodiversity in Finnish forests is improving. Ten per cent of all forests are under protection, and there is no commercial pressure to harvest them."

This does not square with Greenpeace’s analysis of the situation.

"Of the total of Finnish forests only about five per cent are old-growth woodlands, and only half of these are protected," says campaign assistant Annina Käppi.

"We are not saying that we should protect all the forests in Finland or end the forest industry," Käppi says. "We just want to see these ecologically valuable forests conserved."

The protest focused on an area called Kukkuri, where Greenpeace and other environmental groups had identified a 370-hectare site of unprotected old- growth forest. "Greenpeace and others wanted these areas to be protected by the Forest and Park Service, and placed under a logging moratorium so that their natural value could be inventoried thoroughly," says Käppi.

The protest began in May 1999 and lasted three months, after which a part of the area was placed under conservation. But logging continued in the remaining stretch.

"The authorities have decided that there is enough protected forest in Finland," says Greenpeace activist Matti Liimatainen, one of the accused in the Kainuu case. "And yet reports by Finnish regional environmental centres describe how old-growth forests are vanishing, and how the species dependent on them are in trouble."

Liimatainen says the rights of the indigenous Saami people in the north are threatened by the logging. The livelihood of the Saami people is based on reindeer herding, and this relies on free grazing in old-growth forests, where the lichens grow that the reindeer feed on.

The National Forest Programme plans meanwhile to increase annual logging quotas from 130,000 hectares to 150,000 hectares of clear cutting over the next few years.

Finnish environmental groups hope, however, that concern voiced by the Association of German Magazine Publishers (VDZ) over the potential use of old- growth timber in paper products imported into Germany will have an impact on Finnish forestry practices. Publishing firms in Britain and Switzerland express similar worries.

Just over 40 per cent of wood pulp exports from Finland go to Germany, which also imports about 20 per cent of all paper made in Finland.