Finland’s ambitious target to be carbon neutral by 2035 is in jeopardy as more greenhouse gases are being emitted than stored.
Across the globe, the climate is changing. Summers are getting warmer, there are periods of excessive drought or rainfall interchangeably and glaciers are melting. Finland is no different. There, the summer has been unexpectedly warm and plants have suffered. Sanila-Aikio, former president of the Finnish Sami parliament commented: “The sun keeps shining and it never rains.” The boreal forests grow slowly and steadily. This region, known as “land of the little sticks”, stretches around the northern hemisphere through Siberia, Scandinavia, Alaska and Canada. It is this forest landscape which promised to meet Finland’s carbon-neutrality target – the most ambitious in the developed world – by 15 years before other EU countries.
Disappearance of Finland’s land sinks dashes hopes for 2035 carbon-neutral targets
Of course, Finland does have the resources for it. Almost 70% of the country is covered by forest and peatlands and for many years, this had successively removed more carbon from the air than was released. However, things started to fail, when from around 2010, land areas started to shrink at exponential rates meaning that by 2018, Finland’s land sinks– areas which absorb more carbon than is emitted – had practically disappeared. In fact, forest sinks sadly reduced in size by 90% between 2009-2022. Combine this with rising emissions from soil and peat and you have a recipe for disaster, as Finland’s land sector turned into a contributor of global warming.
This sudden reversal of fortune means that even though Finland is cutting emissions across all other sectors by 43%, its net emissions match those of around 30 years ago, reversing any progress made. The impacts on Finland’s objectives towards climate management have been radical with around 118 countries who are dependent on Finland’s land sinks, receiving the residual impacts. There are obviously important concerns regarding this climate crisis. Finland’s Natural Resources Institute researcher, Juha Mikola affirmed: “We cannot achieve carbon neutrality if the land sector is a source of emissions. They have to be sinks because all emissions can’t be decreased to zero in other sectors.”
Cimate change and human destruction destroying essential Finnish woodland
Several reasons underpin the decline in land sinks. Burning peat for energy, which is more polluting than coal, is still common practice as is the commercial chopping down of forests. The climate itself is a less obvious culprit in the change, yet higher temperatures are causing frozen peatlands to disintegrate, releasing greenhouse gases in the process. Drought is responsible not only for dying but also decaying trees, which along with neighbouring mature species, cannot absorb maximum levels of carbon. Worryingly, these alterations in the landscape are not unique to Finland. France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Estonia have seen similar results with declining land sinks and other natural catastrophes related to climate change have seen woodlands across Europe decimated.
Timber companies in Finland claim that the forests still absorb more carbon than what is released and claim that fossil fuels pose the biggest threat, emphasizing that when trees are harvested, seedlings are planted to replace them. Proposals to control the crisis include forest management initiatives, as well as to better protect existing ecosystems.
One thing remains clear: climate change and human exploitation will continue to remove land sinks unless measures are taken. In defence of the crisis and to counteract these fears, one spokesperson Finnish forestry firm, UPM said: “too many climate policy hopes were pinned on the land-use sector sinks.”
