International and EU forest affairs

International and EU commitments and agreements related to forest and environmental policy have significant impacts on the Finnish forest sector and wood processing industry.

Key themes of international forest policy in the recent decades include ways to promote sustainable forestry and halt biodiversity loss, protection of the diversity of forests and nature, verification of sustainability in the management and use of forests, climate change mitigation, bioenergy, fight against illegal logging and the trade associated with it, and good governance.
 

Finland is active in international forest and environmental policy

The most important international forest policy processes and agreements include the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF), UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD), Forest Europe processes, and work on the forest sector in the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and cooperation network for international natural resources policy.

Finland’s accession to the European Union in 1995 meant that the EU rules related to forests had to be taken into account in the national legislation. The EU does not have a common forest policy similar to the common agricultural policy, but there are forest-related issues included in many other sectoral policies of the EU.
 

Related links:

Ministers discuss implementation of EU Forest Strategy and access to fertilisers at reasonable price (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry press release 21 November 2022
Meeting of National Forest Council concerned about combined impact of different EU initiatives on operating environment of forestry (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry news 15 December 2021, in Finnish)
How does EU Forest Strategy impact in individual forest owners? (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry blog 21 July 2021, in Finnish)
New EU Forest Strategy is partly stepping over the competence of Member States on forests, different aspects of sustainability included better than anticipated (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry press release 16 July 2021)