Juhlapuhe, EEAC Annual Conference, Varsova, Puola, 15.9.2006

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!

Sustainability? Sure, it is what we really need! Everyone of us might respond with those words. But what has sustainability or rather its contrast meant in practice in the past? The answer of the history is very clear. Professor Marvin Harris and many other researchers have in their research concluded that never in history has mankind realized the influence of consumption and the effect of reproduction on people´s values and attitudes. People have been in total ignorance of the long-term and cumulative influences of the decisions involved. All human cultures have thus been projects with a start and an end. Those tribes which had features of sustainability in their society survived longer than the others.

      Only a few decades ago everything seemed to be open to the unlimited expansion of the activities of man; no limits to the economic growth seemed to occur. Today, everything seems to have changed, although in principle nothing has changed. The only thing which has taken place concerns the understanding of the human species. Ordinary people and their leaders, at least some of them, have at last realized that our consumption culture is based too much on fossil and other non-renewable energy resources. Wars over resources belong to the realities of today. Differing from the earlier constellations, interest is restricted to the use of the natural resources. Ownership of land itself is not the issue anymore.

     Severe problems with the availability of, for instance, raw oil, may arise even in the near future which means in addition to scarcity, a rise of prices. But this is only one, although a very practical side of the coin. On the other side, we find the greenhouse effect and climate change. Gas, oil and coal resources have been unevenly reserved on the surface of our planet during 500 million years. If we now use them during a period of about 200 years, we forward climate change and accelerate smelting of the remaining glaciers. We must remember that we happen to live during an interglacial period in between two ice ages. The key problems arise from the speed of the raise of the surface temperature of the globe which has been inhabited by man to its edges.

        Ladies and gentlemen! Ecology is the science of limiting factors. Food and shelter are basic ecological factors. In earlier times they determined the abundance of human populations and the boundaries of their settlements. The raw oil period changed everything, however, not for ever but as geologically for a very short period of time. The blind faith to regard limited as unlimited formed ecologically a masking factor. Masking factor is a limiting factor which masks the influence of the other limiting factors. 

      Today we need urgent measures. We have to cut very many mega-trends which have been the result of the activities of our species, in addition to the rise of the average temperature, the expansion of desertification, pollution of ground and fresh water resources as well as arable land and continuous and rapid loss of biodiversity. The best were, if we could find measures which have a multifunctional role and importance in this context. We know that all actions have an impact on the ecosystem, but we can raise one ecosystem above others due to its general importance. It is naturally the forest. We are now in a rather peculiar situation. By burning fossil energy resources, i.e. the remnants of the ancient forests we influence in many different ways the present forests, their growth and composition as well as on other living organisms within them. Ancient and present meet in an interesting way in the forest.

     Forests constitute really a laboratory, an experimental field and a lecture room to study different patterns of sustainability. Due to or instead of their smaller natural biodiversity than the rainforests, for instance, the Finnish taiga and sub-arctic mountain birch forests are illustrative enough for this review. Sustainable use of natural resources is a priority in the Finnish society. This has been expressed in the legislation on forestry, reindeer husbandry, fishing and hunting, partly since the 17th century. The teacher has been the nature itself with the well known extreme phenomena in the area adjacent to the arctic zone. Due mainly to ice ages we have no fossil energy resources in our territory which means that we have an immediate interest to base our energy policy on renewables.
       But what might be a usable definition of "sustainability" for this review? For instance, that of the "Brundtland Commission" which defined it is as follows: "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". The present Finnish Hunting Act says that hunting must always base on the principle of sustainable use. The human settlers of the present Finnish territory after the Ice Age were hunters. They found that there are only two ungulate species which can convert non-edible material into edible one and which are, on an average, abundant enough throughout the year to be hunted, namely the wild reindeer, Rangifer tarandus, and the moose, Alces alces, in this order.
 
         Today - after great to-and-fro changes in abundance - there are about 100 000 moose in Finland inhabiting its whole territory, whereas the wild reindeer has been replaced in northern third of the country by the semi-domestic reindeer originating from  the wild fell reindeer of the Scandinavian mountain range.
 
          The reindeer husbandry is regulated by its own legislation, the Reindeer Husbandry Act. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry determines the number of reindeer to be left alive after the round-ups that each reindeer owners´ association is allowed to keep in its territory as well as how many reindeer each partner to the association is allowed to own. This is largely based on the number of reindeer pasturing in the territory of each association in winter, because this may not exceed the estimated sustainable productive capacity, the carrying capacity, of the winter pastures.

        Up to the 1970´s the reindeer herders moved by conventional methods when herding their stocks in the forests and on the fells. Very rapid motorization of the field works has naturally made this work easier, but at the same time the expenses have increased and take a bigger portion of the gross income, and the old management skills have gradually been forgotten. Very recently remarkable rise of oil prices has been compensated to the reindeer owners by the returns of refuel taxes.

        The modernization of the reindeer husbandry is an illustrative example how even the livelihoods of the remote forests of northern Europe have been connected to the supply of a natural resource, the reserve of which is restricted and disappearing rapidly on this planet. The same facts and phenomena concern the forestry works in the same forests of northern Finland. Still in the 1980´s logging was carried out by forest workers even in the remote logging sites owned by the Finnish state in Lapland. Today even those works are mainly performed with the aid of big modern, in such, effective harvesters, fuelled with raw oil from Siberia or the Arabian Peninsula. Still in the 1960´s a horsepower in the forest works was literally power of a horse based on the food grown on the Finnish fields and meadows. It fulfilled the demands of sustainability and service certainty. In the long run the past pattern may appear to have been more sustainable than this "modern" one.

       Ladies and Gentlemen! Wood industry plays an important role in the Finnish economy. Our country possesses about 0.5 per cent of the world´s forest resources, and about 1.5 per cent of the world´s harvesting is done in Finland. Our share of the production of the forest industry is 5 per cents and we account for a tenth of world exports. This is possible, since of the total Finnish land area of 30.5 million ha, 26.2 million ha, i.e. 86 per cent, is classified as forestry land.

      Thus it is not insignificant even from the global point of view, how we manage our forests, both commercial and protected ones. Our tradition to perform in principle sustainable forestry measures originates from the corresponding practices in Germany for two centuries ago. Both the Forest Act and the Act on the Financing of Sustainable Forestry were renewed in the 1990´s simultaneously with the Nature Conservation Act. They all entered into force in 1997. The Forest Act promotes the economically, ecologically and socially sustainable management and use of forests so that they provide a sustainable good yield while the general conditions for the preservation of biodiversity in natural habitats are maintained, while the Nature Conservation Act restricts the use of forests for the part of e.g. key habitats of endangered species, valuable natural habitats as well as particularly valuable landscape areas. The purpose of the Act on the Financing of Sustainable Forestry is to secure the sustainability of wood production and the maintenance of biodiversity in commercial forests with the aid of money from the state. The nature conservation areas total 2.7 million ha, of which a little more than a half is treeless land.

       The production of the Finnish forest industry is mainly directed at export, which account for more than 70 per cent of the average annual production. Since 1974 the annual increase of the growing stock has been 10-20 million cubic metres higher than the total drain, i.e. harvesting and natural mortality as decay. About 95 per cents of the growth occur in forests that can be used for wood production. The forecast for the annual increase is 97 million cubic metres, and the maximum allowable cut of forests available for wood production is about 66 million cubic metres. The take-up rate has been around 85 per cent of the estimated maximum annual allowed cut. Thus the use of our forests has resulted in carbon sinks, i.e. binding of carbon into trees, in addition to other plants and the soil.

      All the aspects connected with the climate change and acclimatization to it by the trees are very sensitive at the moment, especially since the rotation period of northern trees is long and the varieties of the species involved have acclimatized to local weather and climate conditions. On the one hand, warming of the climate together with increase in carbon dioxide content might increase the growth of forests. On the other hand, the risk of insects, fungus diseases and storminess might increase. The latter would mean the return in forest sciences to the old German "Waldhygiene" approach of problems. The same problems concern also the other plant and animal species living in forests and the general problems to maintain biodiversity as already determined in the legislation accepted for the instruction.

         The possible climate change with its contrary and partly controversial consequences has resulted in raise of caution on the agenda in everything we do in the forests. We must remember that a forest is an ecosystem where one action influences another. In commercial forests the owner utilizes the results of a rotation period of more than a half of a century. Thus it is natural that the length of the evaluation perspective covers centuries.

           Like I said before, Finland possesses only half per cent of the world´s forest resources, but its, in world scale rather simple ecosystem and utilization pattern illustrate, among others, real alternatives of forest works and forestry measures. It also shows how legislation may be used to ensure sustainability in commercial forests and forest industry. The figures and problems are naturally totally different at the equator. About 47 per cent of the world´s forest area is located in that tropical zone, where already more than a third or even half of the original natural forests have been destroyed. Each year about 15 million hectares of tropical forest disappear. Around 20 per cent of the tropical wood is used as raw material in the processing industry.

            The fate of the tropical forest, the lungs of the biosphere, together with the climate change caused by modern man, the unsolved replacement of the use of the fossil energy resources by renewables and continuous desertification process and erosion express an urgent need for sustainability research and development of sustainable living structures and standards. The world is full of potential masking factors. Development assistance finances should be concentrated for these purposes. Sustainability is the only choice which can be accepted.         

 Takaisin Back