SOCIALLY SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY IN NORTHERN FINLAND: CONFLICTS OR CONSENSUS IN FUTURE?

Forestry is still an important branch in Finnish Lapland: almost 3600 Laplanders (including wood processing and paper industry) are employed in the forestry. About 4,16 million cubic meters of wood was cut in the year 2004 in Lapland and from this the share of the private forest owners was about 60 per cent. Hence, also selling of wood is still important income in Lapland. Despite of these facts, the role of the forestry is critical in developing the Lappish countryside.

Forestry is continually in conflicting relationship with reindeer-herding, tourism and nature conservation in Lapland. Forest conflicts, which also rise to the national and international media, are a serious risk for the industry in Lapland and can even cause a threat to forestry’s profitableness. Here is the reason for the study: how forestry’s and other livelihoods at the Lappish countryside can solve conflicts in using the nature and how they all can develop side-by-side.

In the research will be interviewed representatives of forestry and they are asked, how to develop socially sustainable forestry in the local and regional level in the future. Especially relations between forestry and reindeer-herding, tourism and nature conservation are in the scope of the research. The aim of the study is to produce information, which can be used as a base for better planning and practices. Research is part of the EU-Life LandscapeLab-project.