BIOS: Ecological reconstruction

Forests have a decisive role in Finland both regarding the economy and climate change and biodiversity. The overall transition cannot succeed without a successful transition in forest use.

A tolerable compromise must be found between the various economic, social and cultural interests within ecological boundaries. As national policies have for decades had a decisive role in how forests are managed, the guiding principle of ecological reconstruction – a transition coordinated and largely financed by the government – is especially suited to the case of forests.

Given the considerable expertise in Finland, the economic utilisation of forests should be developed towards long-lasting products. Finland has excellent possibilities for forest management and forest industry practices that increase the uptake and storage of carbon much better than the current profile of forest use. Labour intensive tasks in forestry that aim for carbon sequestration and storage, such as reforestation and forest restoration, also offer new job opportunities.

Although forest growth has improved, the levels of annual harvesting cannot be increased. If the decisive role of forests as carbon sinks and storages and loci of biodiversity is undermined, the other sectors of the national economy will have the impossible task of picking up the slack. If the carbon sink of the forests decreases, emission cuts in other sectors must be increased. If the decrease is radical, the other sectors will be unable to cope with the increase.

Current annual harvest levels are close to the (optimistically) estimated maximum replacement level. In terms of biodiversity, the current levels are clearly unsustainable. The 2018 assessment of threatened species estimated that 76 per cent of forest biotopes are threatened and 21 per cent are vulnerable. The unsustainable use of forests is the main reason why Finland has not achieved its goals as a signatory to the Convention of Biodiversity.

As the Finnish Climate Change Panel concluded in a recent study, projections of forest growth and the development of carbon sinks and storage have to be based on the use of more than one scenario, model or modelling tool. All models consistently show that the loss to the carbon sink is greater than the harvested amount. As the role of carbon sinks will grow both nationally and internationally, it is not possible to shrink the sinks without creating inordinate burdens on other sectors of the society.

However, carbon sinks are of major importance in binding emissions. According to the above-mentioned study by the Finnish Climate Change Panel, if the level of harvest was halved to approximately 40 million m3 from the current roughly 80 million m3, during the years 2021–2050, forests would accumulate as much carbon as the rest of the sectors would emit if they maintained current emission levels. However, there is no need to go to this extreme, as the other sectors are capable of quick and significant emission cuts.

The forest industry can be divided roughly in three: the mechanical industry (saw mills), chemical wood industry (pulp, paper, liner, etc.) and bioenergy. Out of these, the chemical sector is by far the biggest, both in terms of the amounts of wood that it uses and the monetary value created. As harvesting levels cannot substantially increase, the portion used by the chemical sector must decrease in favour of the mechanical sector. At the same time, the proportion of longer-lasting products must increase. The economic effect of these changes may very well be positive, especially from the perspective of the forest owner.

Bioenergy use has to be based on the residues from mechanical and chemical industry to be utilised near the place where the residues are formed, so that transport and warehousing do not eat away the benefit gained by replacing fossil fuels with biomass. Refining liquid fuels from wood has very low net energy (the energy in the fuel is only slightly higher than the energy used in its production), which means that liquid wood–based fuels should be used only in cases where electrification is impossible and they are to some extent necessary (heavy working equipment, aeroplanes).

The chemical sector already uses most of the residue arising from its own activities. Most of the energy that the chemical sector utilises is derived from burning the black liquor that results from pulp production. The lignin within black liquor is a main ingredient of biomaterials that are intended to replace plastic. This means that substantial new residues for energy use are not to be expected. The production of new biomaterials may diminish the residues that have no other use than burning for energy. Consequently, large cities have to find alternatives besides biomass burning for their district heating systems, as imported biomass also has its economic, ecological and energetic limits.