The Future of the Finnish Forest Sector Research Project

Objectives

Future options of the Finnish forest sector are investigated in this study. We assess the effects of changes in the operating environment as well as the effects of different policy options on the use of forests. Central themes are forest-based bioenergy and climate-related services.

Forest product market changes will have profound impacts on forest management and policies in Finland. For the future of the forest sector, it is important to identify possible sources of growth on which material and immaterial wellbeing can be based in the coming decades.

Our challenging viewpoint is to look at the question of how to allocate Finnish forests between different uses such as products of forest industry, bioenergy, non-wood commodities, carbon sinks and other climate-related services, recreation, tourism, landscape, conservation and biodiversity to maximize the utility of the society.

We have two subprojects in the project: (1) Scenarios of wellbeing produced by the forest sector and (2) Importance of forest sector in bioenergy production and mitigation of climate change. The aim of the first subproject is to examine, for each use of forests, the ability of forest sector to produce wellbeing based for instance on production and employment. The second subproject focuses on possibilities generated by the increased demand for bioenergy and climate-related services. For this purpose, a simulation model for analyzing the impacts of different measures of energy and climate policies on the Finnish forest sector is under development.