19 November 2015

Annina Kostilainen from Finland: Over 110,000 new FSC hectares of forest.

By Hannes Mäntyranta.

The Kemijärvi and Salla Jointly Owned Forests are joining the FSC forest certification. This increases the area under FSC certification in Finland by 110,000 hectares.

The two Jointly Owned Forest cooperatives have joined the FSC group certificate of the Metsä Group, and as a result, the area covered by this group certificate alone increases to 150,000 hectares.
The share of FSC-certified forests thus comes up to six percent of the commercial forests in Finland. Jointly Owned Forests are also members of the Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners MTK. MTK has traditionally held a critical attitude towards the FSC.
According to Mr. Juha Hakkarainen, Forest Director at MTK, the organization has no wish to criticize the decisions of the Jointly Owned Forests. “Nevertheless, we still consider that the FSC’s structure and decision-making mechanisms are not appropriate for small-scale family forest owners, which is what the vast majority of our forest-owning members are.
On the other hand, the Jointly Owned Forests are not small-scale forest owners,” says Hakkarainen. The Jointly Owned Forests will continue as members of the PEFC certification, in common with other FSC-certified forests in Finland.
“We clearly lack FSC-certified timber in Finland,” says Ms. Anniina Kostilainen, Secretary General of FSC Finland.
On a national scale, the decision has little effect on certification figures, although the area covered by PEFC certificates has gone down slightly due to changes in the memberships of group certificates held by local forest owners’ associations, and is currently close to 90% of Finland’s all commercial forests.

For more information contact Ms Anniina Kostilainen, Director of the office:

FSC Finland Office
Kuortaneenkatu 1
FI-00520 Helsinki / Finland
Tel. +358 45 8014333
E-mail: a.kostilainen@fi.fsc.org