Minister Mykkänen: Actions needed to restore trust in responsible and sustainable forest industry

Minister of Climate and the Environment Kai Mykkänen met the senior management of forest companies on Tuesday 10 September to discuss the damages to freshwater pearl mussels at Suomussalmi. A particular focus was on access to data on the species and the role of supervision.

Minister Mykkänen called for concrete means from the senior executives to restore trust that the companies’ actions comply with the promises they have made and with the law.

“This meeting was an important first step, but trust can only be restored through actions. The topics discussed were very concrete. The chief executives invited to the meeting showed their commitment to make sure that nature will not suffer due to forest industry’s operations,” Minister Mykkänen said. 

The topics raised included questions related to supervision and access to data on the natural environments, as well as technological solutions to support these. 

“Advance supervision and preventing incidents before they happen has the best impact. Information management in advance planning must be improved so that valuable nature sites can be specified and accounted for. Among the important steps could be closer cooperation between the authorities and better utilisation of satellite and laser scanning data. Controlling the transport routes in forest use planning is an absolute necessity and would improve advance supervision. Besides advance supervision, we also need ex post supervision in order that the threat of sanctions is serious enough,” Minister Mykkänen said. 

Minister Mykkänen and the forest companies agreed to continue the work at a more operational level among the forest executives of the companies, central government authorities, Finnish Forest Centre, forest owners and nature conservation experts. 

A process is under way at the Ministry of the Environment to update the decree on the monetary values of protected animals and plants. The draft decree should be ready to be circulated for comments during the autumn, which means that the new decree could enter into force early next year. The new decree will strengthen the protection of freshwater pearl mussels and other protected animals and plants. The decree will set new values in euros for the protected species that correspond to the present need for protection of the species, the size of their breeding stock and the number and size of their habitats. 

“At the Ministry of the Environment we will continue the discussion on whether legislative amendments would be needed to ensure better control of this kind of incidents and that the offenders will be punished. Possible issues where further development may be needed include expanding the definition of nature damages and including the duty to obtain information in the Nature Conservation Act, as well as developing the corporate fine in the context of the implementation of the Environmental Crime Directive. The time to draw these conclusions will be later,” Mykkänen said. 

• Photos of the meeting for the media (Image bank of the Ministry of the Environment) 

Inquiries 

Lyydia Ylönen 
Special Adviser to the Minister 
tel. +358 50 476 1341 
[email protected]