Now there was a strict felling assessment

Finnish Climate Panel and Finnish Nature Panel published a research report on Wednesday, the central message of which is clear: Finland cannot achieve its climate and nature goals if forests are cut down at the current rate.

About 73 million cubic meters of wood have been cut down in Finland in recent years.

The EU’s climate goal for 2030 is at least a 55 percent emission reduction from the 1990 level towards climate neutrality by 2050.

Finland’s national goal is to reduce emissions by 60 percent by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2035. At the same time, the obligation is to keep the sinks of the land use sector intact.

According to current knowledge, the goals can be achieved with annual fellings of slightly more than 60 million cubic meters.

Three different models

In addition to the climate, we must take care of the diversity of nature. According to the report, this requires increasing protected areas and changing forest management methods to be more nature-friendly, also in commercial forests.

The researchers evaluated the condition of the forests through three different future scenarios. If logging were calculated at 60 million cubic meters per year, Finland would achieve its climate goals.

If felling were 70 million cubic meters, the forests would still bind carbon, but Finland would not reach its goal of being carbon neutral in 2035.

The highest option, 80 million cubic meters, would completely prevent the goals from being met.

There are ways

According to experts, trees should be allowed to grow longer in forests and thinning felling should be reduced. This would improve the availability of wood in the long term.

Chairman of the Nature Panel and professor at the University of Jyväskylä Janne Kotiaho estimates that there are ways to reduce the amount of felling if the decision-makers have the political will.

“One option could be to develop an emissions trading type mechanism for logging forests as well. We know from emissions trading that it has succeeded very well in reducing emissions,” Kotiaho said on Tuesday at a media conference organized before the report was announced.

Climate panel presented in spring 2025that logging should remain at 61–64 million cubic meters per year by 2035 in order to achieve the climate goals.

The assessment of the recent report is similar. According to the researchers, the fact that Finland’s forests do not significantly affect the matter Natural Resources Center announced in December according to the inventory, it is not an emission source, but a small carbon sink.

The big picture hasn’t changed

The results due to changes in the calculation methods have been abnormal, and the calculations are also affected by new research data that is constantly being obtained.

Although the calculations of the state of the forests have varied slightly at different times, according to Kotiaho, no major changes have occurred. He compares it to the temperature phenomenon, where the reading fluctuates around zero degrees.

“When we have plus one or minus one, the signs are different, but the temperature has not really changed substantially,” Kotiaho compares.

Chairman of the climate panel and of the Finnish Environment Institute research professor Jyri Seppälä says that based on the calculations of the recent report, direct conclusions should not be drawn to take some specific measures.

“It is important that different points of view and solution options are analyzed rationally, weighing the disadvantages and benefits, so that we can then choose the right direction,” says Seppälä.

Different viewpoints

If it were decided to reduce felling in Finland by about 10 percent from the current level, it would inevitably affect the availability of wood and thereby also export revenues and jobs in the industry.

That’s why the issue of logging divides people strongly, depending on how you look at it.

According to the researchers, the economy and the environment are not mutually exclusive issues in the longer term.

Seppälä points out that sustainability has always been a matter of honor for the Finnish forest industry.

At the same time, the forest industry must renew itself in order to survive in the future. This means that more valuable products with a higher processing value must be made from the available amount of wood.

“There is value in being able to process our forest in such a way that it becomes a common good for society as a whole. It’s also about competitiveness in the future,” says Seppälä.