Compensate your dreams

Does climate change keep you awake at night? You can offset your entire year's emissions with your own tree.

What if you could offset a year's carbon dioxide emissions with a few hectares of forestland? Allowing a forest to grow can directly contribute to the fight against climate change.

More than one in ten Finns owns forestland, but few think about their ownership beyond financial or recreational purposes.

A significant climate action, however, is closer than you might think, and you don't necessarily have to do anything. By acquiring a small piece of forest or swamp, you're already making a difference. With four hectares, you can offset a year's emissions. There are even smaller ways to get involved, such as planting your own tree, which will grow for the next several decades.

Forests absorb carbon as trees grow through photosynthesis. During photosynthesis, plants produce sugar and oxygen from carbon dioxide and water, using sunlight. At the same time, carbon is stored in the plants.

The average carbon dioxide emissions for a Finn are 10 tonnes per year. In contrast, a hectare of Finnish forest binds, on average, one ton of carbon per year, which is slightly over three times that amount, approximately 3.7 tonnes as carbon dioxide. Thus, a few hectares of forest already capture the annual emissions of one person. Even one tree makes a difference, contributing to the global effort.

Professor Timo Pukkala, specializing in forest management at the University of Eastern Finland, explains that people often don't realize how straightforward it is to increase carbon sequestration. He believes this misunderstanding stems from the forest industry's opposition to reducing logging and concerns about a decrease in wood supply.

But on what basis does owning forestland offset carbon footprints? After all, the forest captures carbon dioxide regardless. However, as the buyer of the forest or tree, you decide whether to let the carbon sink grow in the future.