A group of environmental groups has filed a lawsuit against the Finnish government, accusing Helsinki of failing to take sufficient action to meet the country's Climate Act target of becoming carbon neutral by 2035.
Greenpeace, the Finnish Society for Nature Conservation and Amnesty International say that greenhouse gases in agriculture and transport in particular need to be reduced. The environmental groups also say that large-scale logging is a major threat to carbon sequestration in Finnish forests.
The wood and paper industry from the vast forests is an important pillar of the Finnish economy, but new EU laws for nature protection are imposing increasingly strict requirements on it. This also applies to the wood industry in other forested EU countries such as Sweden, Norway and the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania.
This is not the first time that Finnish organisations have taken legal action. In 2022, a similar complaint was filed, but it was rejected because the climate law was too recent at the time to be effectively assessed. However, the situation has deteriorated since then. In the 2023 annual climate report, the Finnish government itself admitted that the climate targets are unlikely to be met, which is the basis for the current lawsuit.
The environmental groups are basing their case partly on a recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against Switzerland, which found that inadequate climate action violated human rights. The Finnish groups hope that this ruling will set a precedent for their own case.
The Finnish government defends itself by stating that it is already making considerable efforts to achieve the climate targets and that it needs time to be able to introduce new measures. Climate and Environment Minister Kai Mykkänen has admitted that there are problems with carbon storage in forests, but emphasizes that there are still plans to take further steps.
The lawsuit in Finland is part of a broader trend in Europe, where environmental groups are increasingly taking legal action against governments they see as failing to meet climate change targets. In Germany, a group of young people won a landmark case against the government, leading to stricter climate laws.
In the Netherlands, too, the government was ordered by the courts in 2019 to do more to combat climate change following a case brought by the Urgenda Foundation. Such lawsuits highlight the increasing pressure on governments to seriously tackle climate change and meet their international obligations.