Minister of Climate and the Environment Kai Mykkänen (NCP) attended a meeting of the Espoo City Council on 21 October 2024. Mykkänen on Saturday told YLE that the Finnish government failed to finalise its plan to halt biodiversity loss by the start of the ongoing UN Biodiversity Conference in Colombia due to contending priorities between the ruling parties. (Jussi Nukari – Lehtikuva)
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FINLAND is one of several countries that failed to devise a national strategy to stop biodiversity loss by the UN Biodiversity Conference (Cop-16) held in Colombia between 21 October and 1 November.
Only about 30 of the participating countries managed to finalise their strategy by the conference, according to YLE.
Minister of Climate and the Environment Kai Mykkänen (NCP) stated to YLE last week that work on the strategy has been delayed due to persisting points of contention in the negotiations between members of the ruling coalition.
Conducted at the Ministry of the Environment, the work has also been complicated by the wide-ranging repercussions of the plan, he added.
“The national biodiversity strategy is a comprehensive whole that has effects on all facets of society. It’s being drafted with serious intentions, but it’ll take time to reconcile the need to stop biodiversity loss with a just way to go about it,” he explained to the public broadcasting company.
Mykkänen declined to disclose the main obstacles to the work.
“The parties and negotiators have their own points of sore points. If I were to interpret this positively, there’s a willingness to take a serious look at this because everyone understands that the plan will also be implemented,” he remarked.
Countries around the world agreed to devise national strategies to halt biodiversity loss at Cop-15 in Canada in 2023. The documents are a key tool for realising the targets thrashed out at the conference – to protect 30 per cent of forest and sea areas and to begin restoration work in at least 30 per cent of global land and sea areas by the end of the decade.
The Finnish government also has an obligation to devise such a strategy under the nature protection act.
Work on the strategy kindled public discussion also a year ago, reminded YLE. It was reported at the time that negotiations within the ruling coalition had resulted in the disappearance of numerical goals, expressed as hectares or percentages, from drafts put together by officials at the Ministry of the Environment.
Oras Tynkkynen (Greens) criticised the current government for neglecting its nature protection goals on YLE’s Ykkösaamu on Saturday.
“It’s symptomatic and, really, consistent if you look at the government’s actions on nature protection. The government has carried out the largest cuts in Finnish history in funding for nature protection. The government has demonstrated its inability to even honour the provisions in its own action plan to protect old state-owned forests with high nature value,” he stated to the public broadcasting company.
“It’s heading in the opposite direction. The government is stepping up many measures that cause the erosion of biodiversity.”
Also Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s (SDP) government, which included the Green League, failed to reach an agreement on the protection plan.
“Maybe in Finland we’re seeing that because we form majority governments, [and] the group [of ruling parties] always includes at least one that tends to put the brakes on environmental action,” analysed Tynkkynen.
Mykkänen, who will step down as minister of climate and the environment at the end of the year to become the Mayor of Espoo, will travel this week to Colombia for Cop-16.
“We are deeply concerned that the minister of climate and the environment […] will travel empty-handed to Colombia: there is neither a national plan, nor an intention to increase international support,” Anne Tarvainen, a programme manager at WWF Finland, said in a press release on 18 October.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
