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Photo credit: Finnish House of Parliament.
Climate activists from Finland and Sweden partially covered the façade of the Parliament House in Helsinki to protest against the Finnish state-owned company Neova harvesting peat in Swedish wetlands, with, they claim, EU funding.
Swedish activist group Återställ våtmarken (restoring wetlands) and their Finnish counterpart Elokapina covered Finland’s Parliament partially with red paint resembling blood on 25 September 2024.
The group’s protest was meant to draw attention to the climate-disastrous peat mines in Sweden run by Finnish company Neova.
The majority of Finns saw the act as serious vandalism and an attack on democracy.
The protesters have been sentenced to pay tens of thousands of euros in compensation for damaging the historic building, which has been used to clean the iconic building.
The environmentalists claim that the Finnish government has received more than 400 million euros in subsidies from the EU’s JTF (Just Transition Fund) for the reduction of peat production. At the same time, the state-owned company has moved and expanded peat production in neighbouring Sweden with the help of this funding, according to the protesters’ claims. Neova is the main actor in Swedish peat production, having a more than 60 per cent market share in the country.
Neova’s communications director, Ahti Martikkala, refutes the claims and says that peat production has been reduced in both countries.
The company, he says, did not receive EU money for business expansion in Sweden.
According to the Finnish Ministry of Labour and Economy, the money has been used in Finland to compensate for the environmental and socio-economic effects caused by the shutdown of peat production. The peat industry provides direct and indirect jobs, and closing down peat mires significantly impacts the sparsely populated areas in Finland.
Sweden’s peat production is one million cubic metres, focusing on raising light-growing peat and livestock bedding peat.
In Finland, a lot of dark peat has been mined for fuel in the past, and the light peat was removed from above it for growing peat. Total production is roughly five million cubic metres. The decline in peat production continues in both countries for environmental reasons, as the extraction and use of peat are equated with non-renewable fuels such as oil.
The author of this article is Timo Taulavuori. Photo credit: Finnish House of Parliament.
