The impact indicators are part of Stora Enso’s Biodiversity Leadership Programme and measure the quality of all harvesting operations in Finland, Sweden, and the Baltics. They cover six biodiversity elements that are valuable for forest nature, helping us to ensure we protect biodiversity when harvesting. Our target is to have 90% performance on all indicators. This means we aspire to mitigate negative effects on biodiversity in 90% of representative harvesting sites that have the relevant environmental elements. Our ultimate target is to reach 100% performance in 2030.
Weighted average of our biodiversity performance on harvesting sites in Finland, Sweden, and the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania). Read about country-specific performance in more detail on our indicator webpage.
“Similar indicators have been an integral part of harvesting operations in Finland, Sweden, and the Baltics also previously, but in 2021 we stepped up our efforts to further harmonize our practices and monitoring to increase clarity and comparability. Although the harmonization is still in progress, we wanted to already start reporting, because common and transparent reporting throughout helps us to share experiences, gather learnings, implement the best practices, and continue to improve,” says Annika Nordin, acting Head of Sustainability, Forest Division.
Analysis of the results is the key to continuous improvement
In 2022, we were especially successful in protecting waters and the buffer zones around them. On the other hand, we need to put more focus on protecting and preserving deadwood, both standing and on the ground. Particularly, we still need to do more when it comes to the creation of high stumps to reach the 90% target. Different environments call for different measures, and thus also the challenges and successes vary from country to country. Read more about our performance and development plans for each country below.
FINLAND
“We have arranged water-related trainings, and it’s great to see their positive impact in our achievements in protecting soils, waters, prioritised habitats, and buffer zones. We participate in several water-related collaborations, for instance with WWF Finland, which will give us further insights. Our development needs relate to deadwood. We will add focus on preserving ground deadwood, and despite an increase in high stump creation we still need to improve. Regarding tree retention, we left a significant amount of retention trees on average, but there is uneven distribution between sites, which we need to take into consideration.”
- Niina Partanen, Environment Manager, Forest Finland
SWEDEN
“In our forests in Sweden, we performed well in tree retention, buffer zone preservation, as well as soil and water protection when crossing streams. We are also doing quite well in protecting deadwood on the ground and creating new dead wood, such as high stumps. Our biggest challenge relates to prioritized habitats, some of which are negatively affected by soil damages nearby. To improve our performance, we currently focus on training our harvesting teams in sustainable driving techniques to reduce soil damage. Overall, we will continue to train and give feedback to the harvesting teams to improve further.”
Hanna Staland, Sustainability Specialist, Forest Sweden
BALTICS
“Our monitoring practices and indicators differ a bit compared to Sweden and Finland due to the different characteristics of forests in the Baltics. I’m happy to see that we have succeeded in improving our harvesting operations overall, and almost all our indicators are above the 90% target level. This is thanks to active communication with harvesting partners and forest owners, and we continue to provide trainings both for partners and employees to keep up our progress.”
- Margus Kuusk, Forestry & Safety Manager, Forest Baltics
Contributing to forest biodiversity with a data-driven approach
All decisions on how to best enhance biodiversity must be based on data. For this, we work towards making all biodiversity monitoring fully digital by developing various remote sensing technologies and enabling digital data collection.
“Especially our own forests in Sweden provide an excellent platform to test and advance different methods. It’s integral that our biodiversity actions are real and measurable. For this, we are working to develop tools for digital data streams as well as biodiversity modelling, which will play a significant role in helping us to evaluate what are the actions we can take now to have the most impact for the future,” Nordin concludes.
