I’m in a forest in Finland watching trees die a brutal death. A monstrous machine like something from The War of the Worlds is lumbering among the pines, its deadly arm swaying menacingly. Every now and again it selects a victim, grasps it at the base and slices through the trunk like butter. As the tree crashes through the canopy, the machine – called a – raises it aloft as if in triumph, strips the branches and butchers the trunk into three. It is all over in seconds.
Despite its apparent ruthlessness, this is how benign forest management is done in a country which is betting the farm on wood. Finland is aiming to be , largely by creating a “circular bioeconomy”. That means all the material and energy inputs come from sustainable wood or renewable energy, and all the products are 100 per cent recyclable. Fossil fuels are history.
That brave new economy starts right here. The forest I am visiting is on a farm about 100 kilometres north of Helsinki. The current owners, Laura and Mika Hämäläinen, are the latest in a long line. Their 350-hectare forest has been passed down the generations since 1724.
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Family ownership of forests is the norm in Finland; about 60 per cent of its 23 million hectares of woodland is owned by 600,000 private individuals. They can largely do as they please with their trees, but many are enlightened, long-term owners who understand the concept of a circular bioeconomy and manage their forest accordingly, says Marko Mäki-Hakola, forest director at , Finland’s federation of farmers and forest owners.
Today’s operation is called thinning, where about 10 per cent of the trees are chopped down to give others light and space to reach their full potential. This pinewood was planted in the 1960s and has been thinned twice before. In another 20 years most of the remaining trees will be felled and the area replanted.
So far so conventional. But where this differs from regular forestry is the attention that is paid to the needs of biodiversity and the climate. Most of today’s harvest will be sent to the sawmill for processing, but some will be left to become dead wood, a vital habitat for up to 5000 species of animals and fungi. Some trees are cut off about 2 metres up and left standing as “high stumps”, another form of dead wood with its own ecosystem.
“Nature management is part of forest management,” says Markus Nissinen, MTK’s local environmental specialist. The way the Hämäläinens manage their forest aims to balance the needs of humans and nature while keeping the ecosystem healthy for future generations, he says.
This nature-based approach is also good for the climate. According to Jari Leppä, Finland’s minister of forestry and agriculture, the country’s forests grow by just over 100 million cubic metres of wood per year, about 70 per cent of which is harvested. This is plenty to support a bioeconomy and also meet Finland’s climate goals. The forests sequester 16 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, which is about a third of total emissions, and as the country phases out coal it is on course to be carbon neutral by 2035.
Forest owners are also flocking to a voluntary MTK scheme which pays them to set aside areas for biodiversity. The Hämäläinens take me to a wood that is managed as a habitat for Siberian flying squirrels, which are vulnerable in this region. There are also lynx, though they are rarely seen.
Later that day, I visit companies and researchers that are putting Finland’s wood to work, from construction materials to novel applications such as ceramics, clothing, medical devices, industrial chemicals, fibre-optic cables and even a satellite. Much of this is in the R&D stage, but these are the tiny acorns from which a new world economy can grow.
Of course, Finland is handily placed to create a wood-based bioeconomy: it is 75 per cent forested and has no fossil fuel deposits to fall back on. But the model is being copied by other northern countries such as Russia and Canada, says Leppä. Temperate countries with very different types of forest, such as the UK and Ireland, also have much to learn, says ministerial adviser Elina Warsta. To get where we need to be by 2050, it seems the world needs to follow Finland’s lead and start tearing up some trees.
Graham’s visit was paid for by the Finnish embassy in London.
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