Browsing by Author "Maisila, Salla-Mari"

Biological diversity has been decreasing since industrial revolution, and the loss of biodiversity has become a com-mon topic in different groups from environmental organizations to consumers worldwide. Different goals for biodiver-sity conservation have been set both at the global and domestic level, but the continuous postponement of the tar-gets indicates that the government institutions establishing rules for protecting biodiversity are no longer sufficient, and new methods must be developed. One way how biodiversity can be protected is different ecological compensa-tion mechanisms. Ecological compensation is a process where project developers compensate for conservation efforts by creating ecologically equivalent profits or credits elsewhere. Globally, different ecological compensation mechanisms have been used for a long time as a part of nature conser-vation activities. In many countries, these activities are often based on legislation and regulations, such as in the US, Australia, and Germany. Additionally, every EU member state belongs to Natura 2000 network, where various com-pensation regulations have been implemented by the EU’s Habitat Directive. Voluntary-based compensation activi-ties on the other hand are newer way to protect nature and this study focuses on the use of these voluntary activities in Finland. One target group of potential users of ecological compensation mechanisms in Finland are companies that weaken or use different natural resources in their operations. Each company undertakes environmental responsibility in different ways, but ecological compensation as a way to conserve nature could be a powerful tool for companies to show their environmental responsibility. The aim of this study is to determine companies' perspectives on voluntary ecological compensation and analyze critical factors that affect companies’ willingness to participate in voluntary compensation projects in Finland. Three main objectives of this research include: 1) identifying the attractiveness of voluntary ecological compensation from private companies’ perspective 2) defining the most attractive compensation mechanisms and structures from the companies’ point of view and 3) further analysis of the risks and opportunities affect target companies that partici-pate in voluntary compensation projects. This study was conducted by using a qualitative research method. Re-search material was collected in the meetings with companies by using the participant observation mechanism. Study results highlighted, that the attractiveness of ecological compensation is based on multiple different factors that companies consider as important and which should be included in the compensation project. These factors are such as specific location of compensation area and certain ecosystem services in the compensation area. Most importantly, compensation must be related to companies’ operations at some level. Businesses do not get involved if the projects are not targeted to them, and especially if those are not approved by the relevant stakeholders.