Is enhanced biodiversity protection conflicting with ambitious bioenergy targets in eastern Finland?

The study describes how qualitative stakeholder feedback can be used in quantitative scenarios to simulate forest resource use under alternative management objectives. In earlier studies in the region of eastern Finland, stakeholders did not see a possible conflict between increased bioenergy use and nature conservation; this finding is contrary to the results of other studies. The aim of this study was to test with a quantitative modelling approach whether the stakeholder expectation holds and whether forest management in eastern Finland can simultaneously increase biomass utilization and biodiversity protection. Prior to this study, three alternative scenarios on forest resource use were created in a participatory stakeholder process, involving a broad range of stakeholders, with half of them being from research and education. In the current study, a large-scale forest resource planning model (MELA) and a sustainability impact assessment tool (ToSIA) were used to simulate the different alternative scenarios and present the results back to the stakeholders in order to evaluate them. The scenarios were evaluated by stakeholders using multi-criteria analysis. In a survey, the stakeholders indicated that biodiversity, employment, recreational value and greenhouse gas emissions were the most important indicators to them, whereas growing stock, amount of harvested roundwood, energy wood and protected forest area were considered less important. Of the created scenarios, the scenario combining bioenergy and biodiversity targets was the most preferred by the stakeholders as it performed well on those indicators that were identified by stakeholders as the most important. In this scenario, the area of protected forest and bioenergy production were increased simultaneously. With this study we offer a framework for evaluating different alternatives for future land use. The framework helps to identify key issues that are important to the stakeholders so that they can be taken into consideration in future land-use planning. In addition, the results confirm the stakeholder expectation that by protecting more forests while simultaneously increasing the mobilization of potentially available wood resources, both targets can be met without compromising too much other forest functions such as timber production and recreation.

Stakeholder engagement in scenario development process - bioenergy production and biodiversity conservation in eastern Finland.

In this study participatory approaches were used to develop alternative forest resource management scenarios with particular respect to the effects on increased use of forest bioenergy and its effect on biodiversity in Eastern Finland. As technical planning tools, we utilized a forest management planning system (MELA) and the Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment (ToSIA) to visualize the impacts of the scenarios. We organized a stakeholder workshop where group discussions were used as a participatory method to get the stakeholder preferences and insights concerning forest resource use in the year 2030. Feedback from the workshop was then complemented with a questionnaire. Based on the results of the workshop and a questionnaire we developed three alternative forest resource scenarios: (1) bioenergy 2030 - in which energy production is more centralized and efficient; (2) biodiversity 2030 - in which harvesting methods are more nature friendly and protected forests make up 10% of the total forest area; and (3) mixed bioenergy + biodiversity 2030 scenario - in which wood production, recreation and nature protection are assigned to the most suitable areas. The study showed that stakeholder engagement combined with the MELA and ToSIA tools can be a useful approach in scenario development.