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Good practice Imported

Snowchange Cooperative — Landscape Rewilding Programme (Finland)

Finland · Kontiolahti · See the Finland profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 47% 47/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Snowchange Cooperative, an Indigenous- and community-led NGO, has rewetted boreal peatlands across Finland — the 110-ha Linnunsuo mire and 874 ha of the Koitajoki basin (by 2023) — without pursuing carbon credits, citing unresolved boreal-peat GHG methodologies.

110 ha
Linnunsuo mire area rewetted (since 2017)
185+ species
Bird species recorded at Linnunsuo (since restoration)
100,000 birds
Migratory geese resting overnight (seasonal peak) (seasonal peak)
874 ha
Koitajoki basin peatland rewetted (by December 2023)
1.2 EUR million
Programme funding (Rewilding Europe / EIB NCFF) (2017, over five years)
Snowchange Cooperative — Landscape Rewilding Programme (Finland)

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Snowchange Cooperative
Period
2017-present
Region (NUTS)
FI1D
Keywords
peatland rewetting, boreal restoration, indigenous co-management, community-led conservation, ICCA

Context

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.

Objectives

The programme aims to restore drained boreal peatlands, forests and rivers through community and Indigenous co-management, while exploring — but not overstating — the climate and biodiversity value of the restored sites.

Activities

Linnunsuo, a 110-ha former peat-mining site purchased by Snowchange in 2017 near Selkie (Kontiolahti, North Karelia), was rewetted and is now an IUCN-recognised Indigenous and Community Conserved Area (ICCA). 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. Governance is built around co-management with the village of Selkie, local hunters' associations and Skolt Sami communities at the Njauddam River site.

Results

Linnunsuo hosts more than 185 bird species and up to 100,000 migratory geese resting overnight in season. Despite the carbon stored by these peatlands, Snowchange has not pursued Puro.earth or Verra/VCS credit certification, as partner analysis found no validated greenhouse-gas baseline methodology exists for Finland's more than 50 distinct peatland types.

Conclusions

The absence of a validated GHG methodology is presented as an honest illustration of the gap between ecological restoration and certifiable carbon accounting in boreal contexts. The programme has been recognised internationally with the St Andrews Prize for the Environment (2021) and the Goldman Environmental Prize (2023).

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — Approximately EUR 1.2 million from Rewilding Europe and the European Investment Bank's Natural Capital Finance Facility, committed over five years from 2017.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Landscape Rewilding Programme launched 2017; Koitajoki Watershed restoration runs 2020–2026.
Staffing & skills
Snowchange Cooperative staff, Indigenous Sami and Karelian community members, local hunters' associations

Conditions for success

  • land purchase or control by the restoring organisation
  • co-management agreements with local and Indigenous communities
  • sustained external funding (Rewilding Europe / EIB)

Common failure modes

  • lack of a validated GHG-accounting methodology for boreal peat limits ability to monetise restoration via carbon credits
  • reliance on grant/philanthropic funding rather than a durable revenue stream

Where it fits

Governance type
NGO-led with Indigenous/community co-management
Scale
landscape (multiple restoration sites across Finland)
Income level
high-income

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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