New estimate gives smaller ecological footprint to the Finnish forest sector
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Foto: Ulla Rosenström
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The ecological footprint of the Finnish forestry sector is the largest in the world, according to the international network for footprint estimation. Finnish scientists and decision-makers were curious to know why it was so and how the size of the footprint was actually calculated in the international reports. In a new study, the forest footprint of Finland shrinks by at least one third, to 1.77 global hectares per inhabitant, when all uncertainties in the estimation are taken into account.
Citizens and decision-makers want intelligible and comprehensive information about changes in the state of the environment and about progress in the efforts to promote sustainable development. Such changes are monitored by using various indicators of which the ecological footprint is the most famous one. The ecological footprint measures the area of biologically productive land needed to maintain our consumption. A challenge in the estimation of the footprint is that there is no reliable statistics on the consumption of forestry products. The consumption must be estimated using statistics on forest logging, production, import, and export. International reports have given rather large overall values for the Finnish ecological footprint. The footprint of our forest sector in 2001 was estimated to be as much as 2.78 global hectares per inhabitant.
There is a lot of forest know-how in Finland and also a lot of statistical information about forests, forest industry and use of forestry products. Thus it was found that there were good possibilities to assess the reliability of the footprint by comparing the results obtained by using data from interna-tional sources with estimates made using Finnish data and knowledge. Mr. Ville Väinämö from the Lappeenranta University of Technology found in his master thesis work that the major part of the inaccuracy in the calculation of forest footprints depends on whether the proportion of export is treated correctly. When forest products are exported, their proportion of the forest use is transferred to the footprints of the receiving countries. The proportion of export in the Finnish forestry production is rather high, but there are differences between those of various products, and the inaccuracies of these material flows may lead to considerable over- or underestimation of the Finnish forest footprint. This is what happened in the estimation of the forest footprint for the year 2001. The larg-est error was found in the timber flows for the production of paper, cardboard, and pulp. Another major error was that the utilization of chips in pulp production was not taken into account.
The new estimation of the forest footprint shows that a further development of the method is necessary before the ecological footprint can be used as one of the indicators of sustainable development. It is not alone enough for assessing the sustainability of development, but it is an important indicator in various approaches, such as the Environmental Sustainbability Index (ESI) of the World Economic Forum. Indicators like the ecological footprint have received a lot of international attention and they can considerably affect the reputation of the countries subject to the estimation. The new study is an important contribution to the development of the indicator. It is of essential importance that the possible errors are found so that the message to the decision makers is as correct as possible.
The calculation of the forest footprint was carried out by a group that comprised of researchers from the Finnish Environment Institute and representatives of the Ministry of the Environment, as well as experts from the forest industry, non-governmental organizations, and other bodies of administration. The study was a part of a more comprehensive research project on the applicability of the ecological footprint in Finland.
More information
Leader of the research project on the applicability of the ecological footprint in Finland
Mr Per Mickwitz, research specialist, Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Research Programme for Environmental Policy, phone +358 400 148 847, forename.surname@ymparisto.fi
Results of the estimation of the forestry part of the ecological footprint of Finland:
Mr Ville Väinämö, research scientist, Lappeenranta University of technology, phone +358 40 725 5561, surname@hotmail.com
Indicators as a part of the new generation environmental policy:
Mr Sauli Rouhinen, environmental councillor, Ministry of the Environment, phone +358 50 565 8394, forename.surname@ymparisto.fi
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