On Tuesday, the Finnish Government decided on the central government spending limits for the next four years. The funding framework for the forest biodiversity programme for Southern Finland, Metso Programme was on the agenda, too. The pilot phase of the programme ended recently.
According to the decision, the conservation programmes started on the 1990s will be finalised first. The areas designated to conservation in these programmes have been outside commercial use from the beginning. A small part of them still wait for official establishment and neither have the compensations to landowners been paid.
The government also decided that after finalising the old conservation programmes in 2008–09, the level of funding for conservation will be maintained at the current level but directed to the Metso Programme.
Already last spring it was decided to increase the funding for the Metso Programme by some 18 million euros per year. The decision made on Tuesday adds some 22 million euros per year to the funding.
Metso will start properly in 2010
The Metso Programme will start properly in 2010. However, before that some 15.5 million euros will be used to the programme. The target with this money is to establish common procedures for the execution of the programme for the environment and forest administrations and the local associations of forest owners.
The funding framework decision does not reach the level of what the Metso preparation group suggested earlier this year. Mr. Ilkka Heikkinen, Director of nature conservation in the Ministry of the Environment does not see this necessarily as a bad thing.
According to Heikkinen the government has to make a new decision after the next Parliamentary Elections in 2011 about the overall spending limits for the rest of the Metso period until 2016. “It is clear, that at that point the funding level has to rise if the goals set to the programme are to be reached,” he says.
Heikkinen stresses, however, that the government decision shows great respect to nature conservation. “Especially, as there were extremely important transportation and higher education projects competing for funding; the decision reached was very good for conservation,” he says.
The majority of the Metso funding will be used in biodiversity conservation based on voluntary offers made by landowners. The funding for biodiversity guidance directed to landowners will increase already next year. More money will also be available for research, follow-up and assessments.
“The time scale of the Metso Programme is nine years. In such a programme, which combines new working methods with new cooperation networks, it is only reasonable to start small and then speed up after we master the job at hand better,” Heikkinen says.
Speed-ups for timber sales
The government decided also on activities to speed up domestic timber trade. The goal is to replace by domestic timber as much as possible the timber unavailable due to the roundwood export duties Russia is to employ.
The proposed tax free status for stumpage revenues gained from first thinnings has been regarded as one of the most important activities needed. This proposal is aimed mainly at getting as much pulpwood as possible to the market.
However, the tax exemption-decision cannot be made in Finland without a blessing from the European Union’s Commission.
Overall, the Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry and the Ministry for the Environment got an additional funding of 107.5 million euros for 2009–12 on Tuesday compared to the central spending limit-decision made in spring 2007.
The increase will be directed to regional Forestry Centres and financing for sustainable forestry. The regional Forestry Centres are to use their extra funding in forest owner guidance, gathering regional forest data, intensifying its use and improving its up-to-datedness as well as developing forest planning for forest holdings.
The money will also stretch to improving electronic services and data services to the local associations of forest owners and forest service entrepreneurs.
More forest roads and education
After these decisions, some 18 million euros will be available annually for funding of sustainable forestry. The decision made on Tuesday increased this sum by a million, which is to be used in proving forest roads.
The ten-million increase gained last spring will be used, besides roads, in tending of seedling stands and improving young stands, ditch cleaning and energy wood harvesting and chipping.
The state-owned forestry company Metsähallitus got an increase of 0.4 million euros for supervising of wilderness areas. This decision is based on the observed increase in recreational use.
Railways and roads important to the forest sector will be improved by a hundred million euros per year. Part of this money is ear-marked at state subsidies to private roads.
The Ministry for Employment and Economy directs an extra six million for training forest machine operators.
The government will decide on the National Forest Programme 2015 and the Metso Programme in context of the decision in principle in March 2008.
By Hannes Mäntyranta