Tiina Sanila-Aikio can’t remember a summer this hot. The months of midnight sun around Inari, in Finnish Lapland, were hot and dry. Conifer needles on the branches are orange when they should be a deep green. The moss on the forest floor, usually swollen with water, has withered.
“I have spoken to many old reindeer herders who have never experienced the heat we have had this summer. The sun keeps shining and it never rains,” says Sanila-Aikio, former president of the Finnish Sami Parliament.
The boreal forests here in the Sami homeland take so long to grow that even small stunted trees are often hundreds of years old. It is part of the Taiga – which means “land of the small sticks” in Russian – which stretches around the far northern hemisphere through Siberia, Scandinavia, Alaska and Canada.
It is these forests that have helped to underpin the credibility of the most ambitious carbon neutrality target in the developed world: Finland’s commitment to be carbon neutral by 2035.
The law, which came into force two years agomeans the country aims to reach the target 15 years earlier than many of its EU peers.
In a country of 5.6 million people with almost 70 percent covered by forests and moorlands, many assumed the plan would not be a problem.
For decades, the nation’s forests and peatlands reliably removed more carbon from the atmosphere than it emitted. But starting around 2010, the amount of land absorbed began to decline, first slowly, then rapidly. By 2018, Finland’s soil sink – the phrase scientists use to describe something that absorbs more carbon than it releases – disappeared.
His forest is sinking refused about 90 percent from 2009 to 2022, with the rest of the decline fueled by increased emissions from soil and peat. In 2021 and 2022, Finland’s land sector was a net contributor to global warming.
The impact on Finland’s overall climate progress is dramatic: Despite cuts emissions by 43 percent across all other sectors, its net emissions are at around the the same level as the early 1990s. It’s like nothing happened for 30 years.
The collapse has enormous implications, not only for Finland, but internationally. At least 118 countries rely on natural carbon sinks to meet climate goals. Now, through a combination of human destruction and the climate crisis itself, some are reeling and starting to see declines in the amount of carbon they are taking in.
“We cannot achieve carbon neutrality if the land sector is a source of emissions. They must be sinks because all emissions cannot be reduced to zero in other sectors,” says Juha Mikola, a researcher at the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), which is responsible for compiling the official government figures.
“When these targets were set, we thought that soil removals would be around 20 million to 25 million tonnes and we were able to reach the target. But now the situation has changed. The main reason is that the sinking of forest land has decreased by almost 80 percent,” he adds.
Tarja Silfver, a research scientist at Luke, says: “This makes the targets very difficult to achieve. Really, really hard.”
The reasons behind these changes are complicated and not fully understood, researchers say. Burning peatland for energy – more polluting than coal – remains common. Commercial logging of forests – including rare primeval ecosystems formed since the last ice age – has increased from an already relentless pace, accounting for the majority of emissions from Finland’s land sector. But there are also indications that the climate crisis has become a driver of the decline.
Rising temperatures in the fastest-warming part of the planet are heating Finland’s soils, increasing the rate at which peatlands are breaking down and releasing greenhouse gases into the air. Palsas — enormous piles of frozen peat — are rapidly disappearing in Lapland.
The number of dying trees has also increased in recent years as forests are stressed by drought and high temperatures. In South-East Finland, the number of dying trees rose rapidly, increased by 788 percent in just six years between 2017 and 2023, and the amount of standing dead wood – decaying trees – increased by about 900 percent.
The country’s forests, mostly planted after the end of World War II, are also maturing and approaching the maximum amount of carbon they can store naturally.
Bernt Nordman, of WWF Finland, says: “Five years ago, the common narrative was that the forests in Finland are a big carbon sink – that they can actually offset emissions in Finland. That has changed very, very dramatically.”
These changes, although expected by climate scientists, are of concern to policymakers. Finland is not alone in its experience of decline or disappearing land subsidence. France, Germany, the Czech RepublicSweden, and Estonia are among those who have seen significant declines in their soil sink.
Drought, climate-related bark beetle outbreaks, wildfires and tree mortality due to extreme heat are ravaging Europe’s woodlands on top of the pressures of forestry. Across the EU, the amount of carbon absorbed by its soil each year fell by around a third between 2010 and 2022, according to the latest research, putting the continent’s climate target at risk.
Johan Rockström, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, says: “The reasons [for Finland’s shift] is not fully investigated, but it is most likely a combination of unsustainable forest management and also degradation due to droughts and extreme weather conditions. We see similar trends in Canada, a lot of disease outbreaks, but also in Sweden.
“These are countries in the temperate north that have considered their carbon sink as a very central part of their climate policy,” he says. “It’s such a big risk for these governments.”
In Salla, southern Lapland, Matti Liimatainen and Tuuli Hakulinen walk through the remains of a rare jungle. Black lichen hangs from the branches above enormous, waist-high ant nests. On either side of the muddy track stand dead gray trees in a sea of green – an indication, the forest campaigners say, that this area has never been disturbed by humans before.
But the road they are on has been newly cleared: a forestry path to let loggers in. Behind them lay a bare, clear patch of land, littered with logs and bare earth. Soon the remaining trees will be turned into pulp.
Liimatainen, a Greenpeace forest campaigner, and Hakulinen, project manager of the Finnish Society for Nature Conservation, traveled to the remote forest to document rare species living there, part of a cat-and-mouse game with the forestry industry. By establishing the presence of endangered wildlife, they hope to prevent the mills from obtaining sustainable timber certification and grant the forest a reprieve from execution.
“It was part of a massive old-growth forest and it was cut down last winter,” says Liimatainen, pointing to the cleared expanse.
A fraction of the Finnish forest is believed to be untouched, often found on or around peatlands, but there is little formal government protection. New areas are regularly cleared for pulp and wood.
Researchers say that slowing forest clearing, better protection for intact ecosystems and improved forest management could help reverse Finland’s land subsidence. But the cost has led to resistance from the forestry industry.
Finland’s estimates from the Ministry of Finance that harvesting a third less would reduce GDP by 2.1 percent, costing between 1.7 billion and 5.8 billion euros (between $1.84 billion and $6.28 billion) a year. The increase in forest protection will also cost the country hundreds of millions of euros, according to the Finnish Nature Panel. The state owns 35 percent of forestswhile private owners, companies, municipalities and various organizations own the rest.
Finland’s leading timber companies say the country’s forests still absorb more carbon than they emit, while acknowledging that the amount has shrunk dramatically in recent years. Fossil fuels, rather than forestry, represent the greatest threat to the climate, they say.
A spokesperson for Metsä Group, a cooperative of more than 90,000 forest owners, says that when forest is harvested, new trees are planted, which means that carbon sequestration can be increased over the long term.
A spokesperson for UPM, a Finnish forestry firm, says the 2035 carbon neutrality target is too optimistic and “too much climate policy hope is pinned on the land use sector sinkholes”.
“The calls to limit harvesting often miss the point that the state owns about a quarter of Finnish forests. The government can limit harvesting in its own land if it is prepared to bear the significant direct and indirect financial consequences,” they say.
Under the right-wing government elected last year, much less emphasis was placed on achieving climate targets. The Finnish government did not respond to The Guardian’s request for comment.
But researchers warn that rising global temperatures are likely to further erode Finland’s soil sink. Studies indicate that across boreal ecosystems, the forest loses its ability to absorb and store so much carbon.
“There are some very serious scientific scenarios where, if climate change continues, the spruce in Finland will not survive, at least in southern Finland,” says Nordman. “The whole forestry system is based on this tree.”
For communities that have always lived in the Arctic Circle, the changes are already evident. As autumn approaches, Sanila-Aikio is preparing for the return of the reindeer from their summer feeding grounds before an uncertain winter.
If the drought continues, there will be no mushrooms for the reindeer, she explains. “If they don’t get fat, they’ll starve,” she says.
