The White Horse Press

Green Development or Greenwashing?: Environmental Histories of Finland

Viktor Pál(editor)
Tuomas Räsänen(editor)
Mikko Saikku(editor)

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Title	Green Development or Greenwashing?
Subtitle	Environmental Histories of Finland
Contributor	Viktor Pál(editor)
	Tuomas Räsänen(editor)
	Mikko Saikku(editor)
DOI	https://doi.org/10.3197/63824846758018.book
Landing page	https://www.whpress.co.uk/publications/2023/03/03/pal/
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
Copyright	The White Horse Press
Publisher	The White Horse Press
Publication place	Winwick, Cambridgeshire, UK
Published on	2023-10-01
ISBN	978-1-912186-76-1 (Paperback)
ISBN	978-1-912186-77-8 (PDF)
Short abstract	Authors in this volume argue that Finland, similarly to Denmark, Norway and Sweden, has evolved into a green superpower at the cost of considerable environmental problems. Ironically, Finland’s current leading position in sustainable development has been built on the heavy use of natural resources and by sacrificing ecosystem health.
Long abstract	Finland has often been labelled a ‘green superpower’, lauded as one of the world’s cleanest and greenest countries. Nordic countries in general have tended to be idealised as ‘pristine and green’, in contrast to the rest of the rapidly contaminating world where the race for markets and profits has enormously accelerated consumption, imposing on the environment an alarming level of extraction and commerce, and a wide array of new and old forms of pollution. Environmental historians, however, can perceive that the reputed ‘greenness’ of the Nordic countries is partly an illusion. Authors in this volume argue that Finland, similarly to Denmark, Norway and Sweden, has evolved into a green superpower at the cost of considerable environmental problems. Ironically, Finland’s current leading position in sustainable development has been built on the heavy use of natural resources and by sacrificing ecosystem health. This volume thus seeks to acquaint the reader with many stories of long-lasting negative environmental impacts in and around Finland: old-growth forests have been replaced by intensive forest farming for lumber and pulp industries; most wetlands have been drained for agriculture, forest cultivation and peat extraction; wild animal populations have been decimated; and Finland today is confined to the south and west by arguably the most polluted sea in the world. There are lessons for the future to be learnt from Finland’s tendency to rest on the laurels of a positive environmental reputation built at least in part on myth. In the twenty-first century, the world badly needs less greenwashing and a truer commitment to green-ness.
Print length	239 pages (xvi, 329 pages)
Language	English (Original)
Dimensions	152 x 229 mm \| 5.98" x 9.02" (Paperback)
Media	26 illustrations
Media	5 tables
THEMA	NHD RNF
BIC	HBJD RNF
BISAC	HIS044000 NAT011000
Keywords	Greenwashing Finland Conservation Scandinavia

Contents

Abstracts

(pp. xi–xvi)

Viktor Pál
Tuomas Räsänen
Mikko Saikku

Chapter 1. Introduction to the Environmental Histories of Finland

(pp. 1–8)

Viktor Pál
Tuomas Räsänen
Mikko Saikku

Chapter 2. Knowledge of Trees and Forests – Finnish Forest Research from the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century

(pp. 11–30)

Jaana Laine

Chapter 3. ‘Reaching Maturity’ or ‘Selling Out’? The Idea of Green Growth in Finnish Green Party Environmental Discourses 1988–1995

(pp. 31–47)

Risto-Matti Matero

Chapter 4. The Changing Status of Birch Trees in Finnish Forests from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century

(pp. 48–72)

Seija A. Neimi

Chapter 5. Trash Food? Fish as Food in Finnish Society between the 1870s and the 1990s

(pp. 73–96)

Matti O. Hannikainen

Chapter 6. Cultural Nature in Mid-Lappish Reindeer Herding Communities

(pp. 99–133)

Maria Lähteenmäki
Oona Ilmolahti
Outi Manninen
Sari Stark

Chapter 7. Sámi Frames in the Planning and Management of Nature Protection Areas in Historical Perspective – Environmental Non-conflict in Inari

(pp. 134–153)

Jukka Nyyssönen

Chapter 8. Wolves and the Finnish Wilderness: Changing Forests and the Proper Place for Wolves in Twentieth-Century Finland

(pp. 154–170)

Heta Lähdesmäki

Chapter 9. All Quiet on the Eastern Front? The Finnish Army and Wildlife during World War Two

(pp. 171–196)

Mauri Soikkanen
Simo Laakkonen

Chapter 10. From Stale Air to Toxic: Concerns About Urban Air in Finland

(pp. 199–215)

Janne Mäkiranta

Chapter 11. From Eradication Campaigns to ‘Care Protection’: Finnish Endangered Animals in the Twentieth Century

(pp. 216–231)

Tuomas Räsänen

Locations
	Landing Page	Full text URL	Platform
PDF	https://www.whpress.co.uk/publications/2023/03/03/pal/	Landing page	https://books.whpress.co.uk/10.3197/63824846758018.book.pdf	Full text URL	THOTH
	https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/77073	Landing page	https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/77073/external_content.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y	Full text URL	OAPEN
	https://archive.org/details/7b590835-ce80-4b96-901f-4eddce9e36ca	Landing page	https://archive.org/download/7b590835-ce80-4b96-901f-4eddce9e36ca/7b590835-ce80-4b96-901f-4eddce9e36ca.pdf	Full text URL	INTERNET ARCHIVE

Contributors

Viktor Pál

(editor)

Associate Professor at Tampere University

Associate Professor at University of Ostrava

Visiting Researcher at University of Helsinki

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1301-7517

https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/viktor-pál

Viktor Pál is a Hungarian environmental historian, an associate professor at the University of Tampere and the University of Ostrava, and a visiting researcher at the University of Helsinki. He is the author of Technology and the Environment in State-socialist Hungary: An Economic History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and with Stephen Brain has co-edited the collection of essays, Environmentalism under Authoritarian Regimes. Myth, Propaganda, Reality (Routledge, 2019).

Tuomas Räsänen

(editor)

Associate Professor of Environmental History at University of Eastern Finland

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4288-2710

Tuomas Räsänen works as an associate professor of environmental history at the University of Eastern Finland. His research interests include the history of human-wild animal relationship, the history of Finnish environmentalism and the Baltic Sea marine environmental history.

Mikko Saikku

(editor)

McDonnell Douglas Professor of American Studies and Director of the Helsinki Environmental Humanities Hub at University of Helsinki

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4238-6912

https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/mikko-saikku

Mikko Saikku is the McDonnell Douglas Professor of American Studies at the University of Helsinki. He is the author or editor of several internationally noted academic articles, collections and books, including This Delta, This Land: An Environmental History of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta (University of Georgia Press, 2005) and An Unfamiliar America: Essays in American Studies (Routledge, 2021). He serves as Director of the Helsinki Environmental Humanities Hub.

Finland has often been labelled a ‘green superpower’, lauded as one of the world’s cleanest and greenest countries. Nordic countries in general have tended to be idealised as ‘pristine and green’, in contrast to the rest of the rapidly contaminating world where the race for markets and profits has enormously accelerated consumption, imposing on the environment an alarming level of extraction and commerce, and a wide array of new and old forms of pollution.
Environmental historians, however, can perceive that the reputed ‘greenness’ of the Nordic countries is partly an illusion. Authors in this volume argue that Finland, similarly to Denmark, Norway and Sweden, has evolved into a green superpower at the cost of considerable environmental problems. Ironically, Finland’s current leading position in sustainable development has been built on the heavy use of natural resources and by sacrificing ecosystem health.
This volume thus seeks to acquaint the reader with many stories of long-lasting negative environmental impacts in and around Finland: old-growth forests have been replaced by intensive forest farming for lumber and pulp industries; most wetlands have been drained for agriculture, forest cultivation and peat extraction; wild animal populations have been decimated; and Finland today is confined to the south and west by arguably the most polluted sea in the world.
There are lessons for the future to be learnt from Finland’s tendency to rest on the laurels of a positive environmental reputation built at least in part on myth. In the twenty-first century, the world badly needs less greenwashing and a truer commitment to green-ness.