Finland’s Environment Minister Kimmo Tiilikainen has said that Nordic countries should be world leaders in climate policy.
At the same time he has said Finland could reach its United Nations sponsored Paris Agreement climate goals well ahead of schedule and be carbon-neutral by the year 2045.
Newsagency reports says environmental organisations and the Green Party disagree with the proposal.
Last November, governments throughout the world signed on to the Paris Agreement to try and get a grip on their carbon emissions.
Finland is amongst the countries that have ratified the agreement.
Now, Mr Tiilikainen claims the government could reach its target of becoming carbon neutral even earlier than the agreement estimates.
Mr Tiilikainen holds that Finland could meet the goals by the year 2045, meaning that the country would have a quarter of a century to achieve its goal after the Paris Agreement’s country-specific measures are set to begin in 2020.
“Sweden has a similar schedule,” the minister said.
“The Nordic countries could well develop their carbon neutrality together.”
Technically carbon neutrality means cutting CO2 emissions so that the country’s abundant natural forests absorb them.
Green Party chair Ville Niinistö does not buy the government’s line.
His party has criticised the government’s climate-change-averting measures for being halting at best, and says logging could even endanger Finland’s forests’ role as a major carbon ‘sink’.
“The government’s plans to fell some 80 million cubic metres of trees every year represent not just steps but leaps backward in Finnish climate policy,” Mr Niinistö said.
“They endanger natural diversity, weaken the natural states of valuable forests, gnaw away at nature tourism and the recreational use of natural spaces.”
Mr Tiilikainen defends the tree-felling plan for its assumed positive effects on employment and export gains, and says the decreased carbon sinks can be replenished in time.
Figures from the Finnish Environment Institute and the Natural Resources Institute suggest that logging will effectively nullify Finland’s emissions cuts.
