“Metsän puolella” funding for 15 new projects – seeking new voices between the clamour and silence of forest debates

Launched in the summer of 2023 by Kone Foundation, the Metsän puolella (“In the Woods”) initiative aims to diversify the forest debate. In its second round of applications, a total of around €2.1 million was granted in funding.

“Sometimes in forest debates you encounter silence, when people do not want to talk at all about issues that need to be improved. On the other hand, the opposite of silence is shouting, where people don’t stop to listen to what the other side wants to say. Many nuances get overpowered in loud debates. Metsän puolella provides funding for listening to and understanding the forest – in all its forms and for all the benefits that the forest provides. Even those that cannot be calculated as directly benefiting to humans,” says Mari Pantsar, Change Manager for the Forest Side initiative.

The 15 projects funded in the second round of the Metsän puolella initiative include economic and social research, communication studies, journalism, visual arts, social environmental research, environmental education, film, performing arts, visual arts, and music.

Through the initiative, Kone Foundation has granted funding totalling €4.7 million to 35 projects this year, for research, arts and related journalistic and activistic projects. The continuous call for applications will remain open throughout the coming year, with the Foundation’s Board of Trustees making funding decisions three times a year.

“Funding on this scale is of great importance in the current situation, where Finland is cutting its investments in climate action and halting biodiversity loss. Moreover, funding from an independent and autonomous foundation does not subordinate projects to political control or to the debate about what can or cannot be said,” explains Mari Pantsar.

Highlights of funded projects

The largest funding in the second round (€569,200) was granted to a project by PhD Tuomo Takala and working group. The project Towards strong sustainability forest services argues that the transition to sustainable forests requires a shift towards a strong sustainability approach in forest services and forestry education. Whereas in the current forest services, the well-being of nature and the environment is considered in the framework of and subordinate to wood production, in the strong sustainability model, wood production is considered in the framework of and subordinate to the consideration of nature and the environment. The aim of the project is to create and implement a business model for forest services with strong sustainability and its service products, to study the skills required for the sustainability transition and to develop the necessary multi-professional training for it. In this way, the project aims to broaden the Finnish public’s understanding of the purpose of forest services and what the forest profession can mean.

With their grant (€179,000), Voima magazine will create a model for promoting forest journalism. The project will establish a separate unit within Voima that will produce fact-based, citizen-driven, journalistic information on forest-related scientific knowledge and serve as a meeting ground for different forest-related phenomena. Topics covered include activism, the relationship between politics, economics and nature values, the cultural significance of forests and the relationship of urban lifestyles and forests. It will also serve as a platform for artistic expression and cultural journalism, driven by a strong thematic interest in forests.

The research project Journalism in the eye of forest disputes: contents, practices and influencers of Finnish forest publicity (€352,600), led by Timo Harjuniemi, PhD, examines Finnish forest publicity. Is Finnish journalism on the side of the forest, and whose interests does forest journalism serve? The project looks at the themes and controversies that have dominated Finnish forest journalism between 1990 and 2023, and whose voice has been heard in Finnish forest journalism during that period.

The documentary theatre project Kainuun metsäkiistat (63,100 €) (The Forest Disputes of Kainuu) by theatre-maker Elsa Lankinen and their team explores the relationship between forests and the conflict of interests between forestry and other values of nature. The idea for the performance was born in 2018, when a mediation process was launched between Metsähallitus and environmental organisations to prevent the escalation of forest disputes in Kainuu. The aim of the project is to use documentary theatre based on interviews to explain forest policy, the background to forest disputes and the forest debate to a wider audience in Kainuu, a “forest region” where Metsähallitus manages around 42% of the forest area. The regional theme reflects wider issues of resource use and state responsibility in Finland and the world.

Visual artist Ulla-Maija Alanen has been photographing the sub-surface landscapes of wilderness forest lakes for 15 years. With her grant (€44,300), Alanen plans to compile their time under water into an art book, Water Horizons, and an accompanying exhibition. “My work is an appeal for clean forest lakes. It is my thanks to water,” Alanen writes.

Browse all the funded projects in the Metsän puolella initiative