Snowchange Cooperative — Landscape Rewilding Programme (Finland)

Snowchange Cooperative is a Finnish NGO founded in 2000 and rooted in Indigenous Sami and local Karelian communities. In 2017 it launched the Landscape Rewilding Programme with Rewilding Europe and the European Investment Bank's Natural Capital Finance Facility (around EUR 1.2 million over five years) to restore drained boreal peatlands, forests and rivers.

Linnunsuo, a 110-ha former peat-mining site purchased by Snowchange in 2017 near the village of Selkie (Kontiolahti, North Karelia), was rewetted and is now an IUCN-recognised Indigenous and Community Conserved Area (ICCA) hosting more than 185 bird species and up to 100,000 migratory geese resting overnight in season. The Koitajoki Watershed restoration (2020-2026), the largest river-basin restoration in Finnish history, had rewetted 874 ha of peatland by December 2023, en route to roughly 1,500 ha by 2025.

Despite the carbon stored by these peatlands, Snowchange has not pursued Puro.earth or Verra/VCS credit certification. Partner analysis from the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme found no validated greenhouse-gas baseline methodology exists for Finland's more than 50 distinct peatland types, so issuing high-quality credits was judged not to be a reliable option - an honest illustration of the gap between ecological restoration and certifiable carbon accounting in boreal contexts.

Governance is built around co-management with the village of Selkie, local hunters' associations and Skolt Sami communities at the Njauddam River site. The programme has been recognised internationally with the St Andrews Prize for the Environment (2021) and the Goldman Environmental Prize (2023).

Read the full analysis: http://www.snowchange.org/2022/10/historic-rewilding-and-restoration-breakthrough-in-koitajoki/