International influences in the revision of Finnish Forest Act

ABSTRACT

Major revisions of the Finnish Forest Act were carried out in 1994–1996 and 2010–2013. The need for revision emerged from societal changes and changes in the forest sector’s operational environment that related to the globalisation of markets and influences of international policies. This study analysed the influences of global and European Union forest and environmental policies on the revision of the Forest Act by combining advocacy coalition framework with the four pathways of influence framework introduced by Bernstein and Cashore. The results show that the three identified advocacy coalitions, namely Forestry administration, Private forestry and Environmental coalition remained rather stable over the two revision processes from 1990s to 2010s. The importance of the different pathways of international influence differed between the coalitions. Private forestry and Forestry administration coalitions, which represented forestry paradigm, stressed market-related arguments, whereas Environmental coalition representing environmental paradigm mainly referred to international legally binding rules and non-legally binding initiatives. The argumentation of the actors indicated that international rules and international norms and discourse were regarded to be as equally important.

KEYWORDS:

• International forest policy
• national forest policy
• policy analysis
• policy change
• advocacy coalition framework
• international influences
• pathways of influence

Acknowledgements

Metsämiesten säätiö foundation is gratefully acknowledged for funding the research. The interviewees are also sincerely thanked for their time and cooperation. Two anonymous referees are gratefully thanked for their fruitful comments and constructive feedback on the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Quotations translated by the corresponding author.

2. There are two competing forest certification schemes in Finland: Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes (PEFC) and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). In Finland, 95% of commercial forests are certified with PEFC. PEFC emphasises more economic and social sustainability than environmental sustainability, whereas FSC emphasises aspects of ecological sustainability more than other aspects of sustainability (Vanhatalo 2013).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Metsämiesten säätiö Foundation [grant number 14TU129KE].