Sustainable impact assessment evaluates how different policies, land-use management or alternative scenarios for future economic development affect the sustainability of a sector and provides information for decision makers. BioE-bioD applied the Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment (ToSIA) to project and evaluate alternative future forest resource use scenarios in Eastern Finland. The project conducted a sustainability impact assessment of proposed forest resource use scenarios related to the Finnish Long-term Climate and Energy Strategy and the EU target of halting biodiversity loss by 2020, to analyse possible conflicts and trade-offs and to identify the most sustainable resource use alternatives.
BioE-bioD aimed to:
- develop the assessment framework for sustainability impact assessment on Finnish Forest Wood Chains
- identify indicators and scenarios of alternative resource use together with stakeholders
- apply the assessment framework to analyse the scenarios
- analyse and interpret results together with stakeholders
- inform local and national policy and stakeholders on sustainability impacts of policy implementation, with special emphasis on utilisation of forests for bioenergy and its biodiversity.
Publications
Anniina Haatanen, Michael den Herder, Pekka Leskinen, Marcus Lindner, Mikko Kurttila, Olli Salminen. 2014. Stakeholder engagement in scenario development process e Bioenergy production and biodiversity conservation in eastern Finland. Journal of Environmental Management 135 (2014) 45-53. See here.
Final report:
The final report of the project is available here.
Workshop:
The first bioE-bioD stakeholder workshop was organized on 12th of April 2012 in Joensuu. Participants represented forest industry, forest management, decision makers, research, conservation, and game management.
With this workshop the stakeholders were engaged in scenario planning process concerning bioenergy and biodiversity in Eastern Finland in 2030. The participants discussed lively about significant factors and measures that need to be taken for reaching goals for increasing bioenergy use and halting biodiversity loss. As the main result the workshop concluded that there are no major difficulties to combine the bioenergy and biodiversity scenarios in Eastern Finland.
During the next few months bioE-bioD project team will go through all the detailed results from the discussions and start to plan the new scenarios. The process will continue by forming smaller expert groups which can develop the scenarios further. The participants are invited to give feedback throughout the whole project.
Program of the workshop (in Finnish).
Presentations by Antti Asikainen, Anniina Haatanen & Michael den Herder, Anniina Haatanen & Michael den Herder (all results), Mikko Kurttila, Tommi Suominen, Olli-Pekka Tikkanen
Further information on the workshop: michael.denherder (at) efi.int
Project Partners:
Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla)
Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE)
The project was funded by the Metsämiesten Säätiö Foundation.