Four Stories from 2050: What is the Future of Our Forests?

What will our forests look like in 2050? Four future stories developed based on the Great Forest Dialogue Day explore alternative paths for Finland’s forests and invite reflection on the choices upon which the future will be built. 

In spring 2025, nearly a thousand people participated in the Great Forest Dialogue Day, where people from many different sectors of society gathered to discuss the diverse meanings, values, and futures of forests in Finland across more than one hundred different conversations. Based on the discussion notes from the Great Forest Dialogue Day, DialogiAkatemia has created four different future stories that describe possible development paths for our forests. 

The future stories are not predictions or ready-made visions, but thought experiments about what could happen if certain kinds of choices, values, and conditions guide development. The stories invite us to question our own assumptions about the future of forests and encourage open-minded future visioning. 

“The aim of the future stories is to expand the ability to think flexibly about the future and help break free from locked-in future visions. We want to help an even larger number of diverse people and organizations discover their own agency as creators of the forests’ future,” says Janne Kareinen, Director of DialogiAkatemia. 

The discussions continued on January 28, 2026, at Sofia Helsinki, where nearly a hundred participants from the Great Forest Dialogue Day gathered to develop their own future stories and roadmaps toward them. 

Four Stories of the Future: 

Forest Foxholes 2050: Society has become locked in disputes over forest use, which has weakened the ecological state of forests and intensified the opposition between economy and nature.
Wood Valleys 2050: Sustainable use of forests and high-value-added innovations have made Finland an international pioneer in new forestry.
Protected Land 2050: Extensive forest protection has halted biodiversity loss and transformed the meaning of forests from an economic resource to a source of well-being and vitality.
Haunted Forest 2050: Ecological collapse has destroyed the vitality of forests and simultaneously eroded people’s well-being and society’s economic foundation.

Based on comments requested from experts in forest ecology, politics, and forestry, each of these stories could be possible as a genuine future vision. Our perceptions of the future are mental images that influence how we understand the present moment and our own role in it. By challenging our assumptions about the future and boldly creating new perspectives on it, we can change the direction of our actions in the present. 

The aim of the future stories is to encourage open-minded future thinking and the use of stories in one’s own work, organizations, and stakeholder collaboration.

Click here to download the .pdf file in English (opens in a new tab).

For more information: 

You can contact us at: metsanpuolella@koneensaatio.fi

Minka Virtanen

Coordinator (events, communications, Metsän puolella community organizing)

+358 (0)40 670 4205 minka.virtanen@koneensaatio.fi