Areas supporting biodiversity
Metsähallitus has surveyed the types and locations of areas supporting biodiversity on state-owned lands governed by its business units. As a result of this work, Metsähallitus has defined a total of 1.3 million hectares of areas whose inclusion in the international objective of legally protecting 30% of the land area it will propose to the Ministry of the Environment. Areas supporting biodiversity, or so-called OECMs, complement strictly protected nature reserves.
OECMs supporting biodiversity refer to areas other than actual protected areas. The OECMs support the objective of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030, according to which 30% of the Member States’ land and water areas should be protected, including 10% of strictly (legally) protected areas. Alongside strictly protected areas, other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) should be developed.
The 10% target for strict protection has already been exceeded at the national level in Finland. If implemented, the current proposal will increase the surface area reported as Finland’s protected areas by more than four percentage points.
In the management and governance of OECMs, ensuring the preservation of nature values identified in them over the long term is stressed. While Metsähallitus’ OECM areas are excluded from ordinary forestry operations, restoration and nature management measures that promote nature values and increase biodiversity can be carried out in them.
More than 1 million hectares of OECMs on state-owned lands
Metsähallitus’ proposed OECM area definition contains more than 1.3 million hectares of areas excluded from forestry operations. The proposal mostly includes areas that Metsähallitus deems to meet the criteria for areas supporting biodiversity (OECMs), while some are areas that will be placed under strict protection as a result of inventories.
Most of these sites covering more than one million hectares are found in state-owned multiple-use forests. The most significant OECM area types in multiple-use forests in terms of their surface area are natural and semi-natural mire ecosystems, which account for 617,900 hectares (47% of the surface area) and sites of high nature values in multiple-use forests, which account for 188,990 hectares (14% of the surface area).
The proposal also includes subsistence economy areas with representative biodiversity values in the northernmost part of the country, on which the responsible ministries will conduct participatory negotiations with the Sámi Parliament.
This year, Metsähallitus will continue to inventory primary and old-growth forests on multiple-use forest sites, some of which are also located in the OECM areas, the proposal for which has recently been completed. Once the inventories have been completed, a proposal to include the sites meeting the criteria in the network of strictly protected nature reserves will submitted to Parliament.
A multi-stage preparation process in the background
The areas included in Metsähallitus’ proposal were selected as a result of a multi-stage definition and survey process. The definition and surveying of OECMs began in 2022 in cooperation between Metsähallitus’ different units and as part of implementing the strategy of the time.
In different phases of the work conducted in 2023–2025, the area type definitions and their criteria were discussed in the OECM project steering group appointed by the Ministry of the Environment and at workshops organised in late 2024 and early 2025, at which the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry as well as the Natural Resources Institute Finland and the Finnish Environment Institute also had their representatives.
Metsähallitus’ Board of Directors made a decision on Metsähallitus’ proposed OECM area definition in May 2025. The proposal approved by Metsähallitus Board of Directors and its area definitions will be submitted to the Ministry of the Environment. The Ministry of the Environment will assess the proposal and report the OECM areas approved by it to international protected area statistics as a parallel process with decisions concerning strictly protected areas.