Ensuring the continuous supply of raw material for the forest industry has been the
central goal of Finnish forest policy since the 1960s and there is growing pressure on the forest sector to increase forest logging in Finland. Finnish
ecologists and climate scientists have warned that this would jeopardize both the
climate and biodiversity targets that Finland has set out for itself according to EU and
international law.  Forest biodiversity
has steadily declined over the years, and the urgent need to diminish greenhouse
gases would require maximizing the sinks and reserves in the short term. 

The aim of this article is to scrutinize how Finnish forests are regulated from the
point of view of the biodiversity and climate change targets and commitments that
Finland has signed up to.  As legislation includes only part of these
instruments, soft law is also analyzed. This includes annual logging estimates, forest
certification and best practice guidelines.

Restricting the annual amount of forest logging is practically impossible according
to the existing regulation, and the majority of forest governance instruments, such as
law, subsidies and forest planning enhance increasing loggings. Current forest
governance does not take planetary boundaries into account and forest policy
documents include only abstract biodiversity goals without concrete means to
achieve them. Current regulation on biodiversity protection is insufficient and
there is no forest regulation concerning mitigating climate change. Biodiversity is
continuously declining in Finland, although more slowly than in many other places
on earth.