The future cannot be built from fossil-based resources. Rather, our tomorrow is made from wood. It is grown in forests, whose sustainable and resource-smart management provides us with a unique opportunity to replace the use of those raw materials that are harmful for the climate and to slow down the increase of carbon dioxide concentrations in the  atmosphere.

We have two ways we can slow down the climate change. The first and most important one is the reduction of fossil-based carbon dioxide emissions, and the second one is the binding and storage of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. Forests play a significant role in terms of the latter, since every tree and every product made from wood stores carbon throughout their life-cycle.

“While wood plays a key role in climate change mitigation, we can’t stack all emissions on the shoulders of forests. The world’s forests are not enough to bind and store all of the carbon released through the use of oil and other fossil fuels,” says Vesa Junnikkala,  Director of Sustainability at Metsä Group.

According to the Paris Agreement, the entire world should be carbon neutral by 2050. To achieve this goal, Finland, alongside other EU countries, has made a commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent by 2030.

This means that we still have a long way to go in terms of a carbon-neutral world and that the road there requires ecologically efficient solutions that allow us to use our natural resources more wisely and to reduce the volume of greenhouse gas emissions to a point where our carbon sinks are able to compensate for them in full.

A well-growing forest binds carbon dioxide

The carbon sink of Finland’s forests is doubling

According to an estimate by Luke, the carbon sink of Finland’s forests could double by 2050, even if the roundwood harvesting volume would increase somewhat from its current level.

Furthermore, according to Luke, the current carbon sink of Finland’s forests has been achieved largely through sustainable and active forest management, which includes timely intermediate felling and the selection of a suitable tree species for each site as part of its regeneration.

“People often think that a forest will remain a big carbon storage if they just leave it be. But this is not so: in time, the trees will die and we will have lost the chance to use this valuable, carbon-storing raw material,” says Junnikkala. 

The measurements of the Finnish Meteorological Institute support this: according to them, old forests are poor carbon sinks – if not actual sources of carbon.  “If forests are not managed or used, they will stop being a carbon sink and turn into a source of emissions instead,” says Matti Mikkola, Managing Director of the Federation of the Finnish Woodworking Industries.

“Forest management measures can increase carbon sinks and remove fossil-based carbon from the atmosphere while at the same time transferring the carbon storages to locations where they last for a long time, such as wood products for example in buildings,” adds Mikkola.

The future is in wood