Ismo Pölönen

Reconsidering the role of public participation in the Finnish forest planning system

Abstract The article examines the role of public participation rights in the Finnish forest planning system and considers the need for improvement, with a particular focus on private forests. Public participation is approached here as one of the tools for achieving social and ecological sustainability in forestry. The paper shows that public participation rights are very limited in the forest planning and management schemes in Finland. Among other things, access to environmental information is restricted, which is exceptional in modern environmental and natural resource law. The article concludes that there is a need to strengthen the participatory elements in forest planning if the aim is to improve environmental and social sustainability in forestry.

A potential role for EIA in Finnish forest planning: learning from experiences in Ontario, Canada

Reconciling diverse forest values within policy and decision-making processes is an ongoing challenge in forestry. The use of environmental impact assessment (EIA) provides potential for improving forest management and making it more responsive to diverse interests. This paper examines EIA in Canadian and Finnish forest planning. In Finland there has been a reluctance to see EIA as a tool for forest planning while in Canada some provinces have long applied EIA to forest management. Ontario, Canada, provides one example of applying EIA to forest planning at a range of scales in order to advance integrated planning and help conflict management. The paper provides a brief analysis of the Finnish forest planning system, an illustration of the Ontario EIA forest management experience, and then considers the application of EIA to Finnish forest management. The paper concludes that EIA may be workable for Finnish state forests and would likely enhance planning and management, but given the existing institutional frameworks EIA would be difficult to apply to private forests.

The precautionary principle and management of uncertainties in EIAs - analysis of waste incineration cases in Finland

This article examines whether and how the practice of environmental impact assessments (EIAs) serves the idea of the precautionary principle. The article provides an empirical examination and description of how uncertainties and risks were dealt with in conclusive outputs of EIAs of chosen example cases of Finnish waste incineration projects. The analysis focuses on the time when several incineration projects were in the planning phase in Finland and the effects of this development were seen as being controversial. The findings of the analysis are evaluated against a legislative and theoretical framework. The challenges and strengths of the practice are identified. The article suggests that EIA as an environmental policy tool can promote the pursuit and the application of the precautionary principle. In addition, uncertainty analysis and risk communication in EIA could benefit from a shift towards more collaborative knowledge-making.

The Finnish Climate Change Act: Architecture, Functions, and Challenges

The article examines the key features and functions of the proposed Finnish Climate Change Act (fcca). It also analyses the legal implications of the Act and the qualities and factors which may limit its effectiveness. The paper argues that, despite its weak legal implications, the fcca would provide the regulatory preconditions for higher-quality climate policy-making in Finland, and it has the capacity to play an important role in national climate policy. The fcca would deliver regulatory foundations for systematic and integrated climate policy-making, also enabling wide public scrutiny. The proposed model leaves room for manifold climate-policy choices in varying societal and economical contexts. The cost of dynamic features is the relalow predictability in terms of sectorial paths on emission reductions. Another relevant challenge relates to the intended preparation of overlapping mid-term energy and climate plans with instruments of the fcca.