Esa Konttinen • Tapio Litmanen • Matti Nieminen • Marja Ylonen So Phi All Shades of Green The Environmentalization of Finnish Society Esa Konttinen, Tapio Litmanen, Matti Nieminen & Marja Ylönen ALL SHADES OF GREEN The Environmentalization of Finnish Society SoPhi University of Jyväskylä 1999 SoPhi University of Jyväskylä 1999 SoPhi publishes social sciences at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and it is located at the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy. It provides a forum for innovative studies in social policy, sociology, political science and philosophy. SoPhi publishes 1015 titles per year, both in Finnish and in English. Manuscripts are selected for publication on the basis of expert opinion. Correspondence should be sent to publications editor Juha Virkki, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy/Publications, Univer- sity of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, FIN-40351 Jyväskylä, Finland, tel. +358- (0)14-603123, fax +358-(0)14-603101, e-mail [email protected]. Publications can be ordered from Kampus Kirja, Kauppakatu 9, FIN-40100 Jyväskylä, Finland (tel. +358-(0)14-603157, fax +358-(0)14- 611143, e-mail [email protected]. Visit SoPhi home page at http://www.jyu.fi/~yhtfil/sophi/sop.html ISBN 951-39-0425-3 ISSN 1238-8025 Copyright © authors and SoPhi 1999 Printed at Jyväskylä University Printing House, Jyväskylä 1999 Cover printed at ER-Paino, Laukaa 1999 Cover Paula Kangasniemi Layout Juha Virkki CONTENTS Foreword.....................................................................................................5 Introduction ...............................................................................................7 Esa Konttinen Four waves of environmental protest ................................................ 20 Esa Konttinen Environmental challenges in Finnish countryside in the 1990s......................................................... 47 Tapio Litmanen International Anti-nuclear protest....................................................... 83 Tapio Litmanen From the Golden Age to the Valley of Despair. How did nuclear waste become a problem? .................................... 111 Matti Nieminen Bystanders, bureaucrats and local bigwigs. Discourses of democracy and environmental values in Finnish parliamentary debate on Land-Use Legislation Reform ............... 129 Marja Ylönen The formation of a power relationship in an enviromental conflict ..................................................................... 150 Matti Nieminen What land? What nature? What threat? Controversy over Finnish shorelines ................................................ 180 FOREWORD n Finland, a remarkable increase in the interest of social scientists in Ienvironmental matters occurred at the late 1980s and early 1990s. While very few social science scholars had been engaged in environ- mental issues up to that time, ten years ago a number of mainly younger researchers became involved in the topic. More or less integrated study groups emerged at several universities. At the University of Jyväskylä, Institute of Sociology, such a group organised itself in 1993, consisting of a number of graduate and postgraduate students as well as of their teacher. In Jyväskylä, some themes are more popular than others, resulting from previous research trends at the institute of sociology. Environ- mental conflicts and movements, for instance, have been in the focus of attention. Since the 1980s the institute has developed a tradition in the study of social movements. Also connecting previous trends, is- sues of local environmental administration are among the popular themes. Reflecting this background, the research project Local envi- ronmental conflicts and local administration in Central Finland, fi- nanced by the Academy of Finland, was working from 1993 to 1996. Environmental conflicts were placed within the context of their social environments in an attempt to find out what kind of influence tem- porary or more permanent they had on local communal life and communal decision-making and how the local people and authorities reacted to these conflicts. The research of the group came to consist of national environmen- tal issues like the acceptance (or unacceptance) of the national shore 5 protection program by municipalities and by other local actors; prob- lems and local conflicts concerning the nuclear waste plans of national energy companies; environmental movements in the country; local experiments of sustainable development; etc. Today the research themes are even more diverse, as the present anthology shows. Accordingly, theoretical orientations are also more varied, reflecting the personal interests of the researchers. As one can see, the focus of interest lies in specific concrete proc- esses in Finnish society. The intention is to detect specific social and cultural formations determining local and nationwide environmental policies. The articles, showing the complexity of the contemporary situation, reflect the specific dynamics of each issue within the context of larger societal structures. Diverging tendencies some of which are highly contradictory can be detected. Thus, when moving into the 21st century, we are making choices in crosscurrents. Dr. Esa Konttinen, leader of the group, is a Senior Research Fellow of the Academy of Finland. Currently his main research interests are environmental movements and their activists. Tapio Litmanen, Lic. Soc. Sc., whose work is also financed by the Academy, has specialized in the nuclear waste problem and its local aspects. Matti Nieminen, Lic.Soc.Sc., appointed by the Academy, conducts research on the representations of citizenship in Finnish environmental politics and administration. Marja Ylönens, Lic.Soc.Sc., research is financed by the University of Jyväskylä. Environmental crimes are her present topic of study. Esa Konttinen 6 Matti Nieminen, Esa Konttinen, Tapio Litmanen & Marja Ylönen INTRODUCTION istening to the experiences of tourists visiting Finland will give Lone an impression that Finns live in a country where environmen- tal problems must be non-existent. The five million people are scat- tered across a large area of relatively untouched nature, and a tourist crossing the country will be overwhelmed with the vast forests, large swamp areas, lakes that are so clean that you can drink the water, and in the north fells you can hike without seeing a living soul for days. Once the tourist gets to know people, he will also notice that most Finns put a great emphasis on natural values in their everyday lives. There is an advanced recycling system in Finland, and citizens see it as their duty to separate all the household waste and to place it in appro- priate containers which each household must have. Finns love to hike in the forests and fells; with everymans right of public access to the countryside, they are able to fish, swim, pick berries and mushrooms and even camp almost wherever they like; those living in urban areas have summer cottages on lakesides, where they spend their holidays enjoying the simplicity and tranquility of rural lifestyle. So is Finland the green dreamland it appears to be to a visitor from, say, some densely populated urbanized country in Central Europe? Have Finns found a way of balancing human needs and interests with envi- ronmental values? Or is there something wrong with the picture? In this collection of articles our aim is to reveal what is behind the green 7 Matti Nieminen, Esa Konttinen, Tapio Litmanen & Marja Ylönen curtain. To a foreign visitors astonishment, environmental conflicts do exist in this Eldorado of green gold. To a Finnish environmentalist Finland is also a country where many cultural, political and economic factors have for decades hindered environmental reforms. The juridi- cally well-protected private land ownership has made nature conserva- tion an issue of great contradictions; the traditionally strong forest industry the backbone of Finnish well-being, as the popular phrase puts it has severely clashed with environmental pursuits; and despite the environmentalist attitudes Finns seem to share, they still surrender to the temptations of free-riderism if their personal interests are at stake. So one could say that although Finnish society to some extent can be considered a green society, where a close, plain relationship to the environment prevails, this greenness is manifested in many dif- ferent shades both in national policies and in the everyday life of the people. To give the reader a better understanding of the background of this collection of articles, we will next briefly summarize some of the central features of the processes that propelled environmental is- sues into broader attention in Finland. The awakening of environmental concern Finland, a highly industrialized and technologized country of five million inhabitants in Northern Europe, has experienced a development of environmental awareness typical of Western countries. Within environ- mental protection, the period before the 1960s was a period character- ized by conservationist protection ideology. In accordance with this ideology, national parks were established, mostly in the eastern and north-eastern parts of the country. Environmentalist challenges were first voiced by the radical movement in the second half of the sixties. A number of single issue movements came to birth, the environmental movement being one of them. Pamphlets on pollution issues were published and associations established in order to influence environ-