In Western countries, power is traditionally divided among three pillars, as described by the French philosopher Montesquieu in the 18th century. This system is known as the separation of powers. In Finland, for example, parliament passes laws, while the government implements them. The judiciary, which upholds the rule of law, interprets the laws, and its decisions cannot be influenced by either the parliament or the government.

According to fairly recent news in the press, environmental organisations seem to be pushing for a simpler system. This concerns the Finnish Greenpeace forest monitoring project, to which the Kone Foundation has granted several hundred thousand euros and which can be described as a doctrine of the separation of powers. It works as follows: nature conservation organisations have defined their own criteria for valuable natural forests.

“With the help of this project, a large number of citizens who care about the fate of our natural forests can monitor whether our valuable forests are under threat,” the article, published on 12 February by Metsälehti, stated, as noted by the director of the Finnish branch of Greenpeace, Touko Sipilainen (Touko Sipiläinen).

These so-called concerned citizens are environmental activists who do not accept the natural forest criteria established by the democratically elected Finnish parliament and the government that the parliament trusts. Simply put, nature conservation organisations are creating their own laws, i.e., they are taking over the responsibilities of parliament from the tripartite division of power. Furthermore, according to Touko Sipilainen, Kone Foundation funds are being used to create opportunities to constantly intervene in forestry operations by conducting inspections and actively collaborating with the media and other so-called stakeholders. In short, “interested citizens” are implementing and monitoring the laws they have made (invented) themselves.

What about the judiciary? “Active collaboration with the media” ensures that no timber buyer would even touch the “disputed forests” and would stay as far away from them as possible... Thus, the legislative, executive, and judicial powers in forest matters are currently in “the same hands”. The credit, of course, goes to the Kone Foundation, which seems to know all the people opposed to the forest industry well enough.

In the interest of truth, it must be admitted that the Kone Foundation’s money has been used for much stranger purposes. My “latest favourites” are the projects My Child and Piss Goddess, which received 40,000 euros in funding. According to the project application, they are a continuation of the theatre work “Itku ja kusi” (Cry and Pee). It seems the keywords were “environmental destruction”, as these projects received a significant sum of money.

Let us return to the Forest Monitoring Project. In the first phase, it will focus on state forests, which is somewhat amusing. It seems natural forests are a rapidly renewable natural resource. I remember how, in the 1980s, the fight for the Talaskangas forests took place, which, as environmental organisations claimed at the time, was the “last natural area” in Southern Finland.

Since then, there have been enough natural areas that could be kept almost “continuously” and the “forest guardians” will certainly find others, as there are enough “last pristine natural areas”, natural forests, and forests close to natural forests that the “interested citizens” might imagine saving.

I predict that arbitrary forest protection will not benefit forest biodiversity in the long term. Many forest owners certainly wonder whether it is worth tending to forests that have exceeded their cutting age, or deliberately leaving decaying trees and anything else that would increase the natural value of the forests they own. The risk is elementary: in the future, any activity could become a reason for someone to classify these areas as forests with particularly high natural value, naturally with corresponding consequences for the owners and managers.