Towards a sustainable breakthrough in forest industries

Winter is finally here. However, we cannot afford to hibernate on the efforts to change forest use, or we will be stuck deeper and deeper in the problems of the status quo. Nature’s response to human-induced climate change and biodiversity loss will not rest,” writes Mari Pantsar, the Change Manager of the Metsän puolella initiative.

For the fifth time, the Kone Foundation awarded Metsän puolella funding to projects that promote the sustainable use of forests. Just over €2 million was awarded to 13 projects. Many of these are focused on the transformation of the forest industry – or on the slowness of the transformation.

One of the projects that received funding is a project led by Anni Huhtala, which examines how the Finnish forest industry’s activities in recent years are perceived from the perspective of social value added. In particular, the project analyses the forest sector’s change and innovations, as well as its environmental impacts, in a context where forest industry investments in recent years have focused on the production of low value-added pulp. In addition to a deterioration in economic performance, there is a risk that the social benefits of the forestry sector will erode.

A film project by Ang Siew Ching focuses on innovative products from the forest industry, and asks why wood lignin is still being burned for energy when it could be used to make high value-added products. The film aims to awaken society to think about the forest industry and its products in a new way.

The environmental education project will act as a catalyst by showing Virpi Suutari‘s film Havumetsän lapset to secondary school and university students. The film, which has become a national talking point, tells the story of young conservationists who fight tirelessly to preserve Finnish forest nature.

In building a new, more sustainable forest industry, it is also important to understand the past. The project, led by Ella Viitaniemi, studies the everyday use of forests in southern Finland in the 1700s and 1800s, when most timber was consumed to meet basic human needs. Since then, Finland has experienced a breakthrough in the modern forest industry, which has brought jobs and export revenues to Finland, but has driven wood use to unsustainable levels.

As ecological crises escalate, the forest industry cannot afford to remain locked in the status quo. What is needed next is a breakthrough for a sustainable forest industry with innovative, high value-added products that bring more prosperity to Finland.

The next breakthrough will have to be to bring the forest industry to the carrying capacity of one planet.

We believe that the Metsän puolella projects will contribute to the transformation of the forest industry and at the same time increase social acceptance of sustainable forest-based industries.