In his opening remarks, HIKET project director, academician Markku Kulmala (UH), emphasized the importance of increasing land-based carbon sinks alongside rapid emission cuts. Moreover, he highlighted the need for a broader “Carbon+” perspective that considers the full climate impact of ecosystems, considering not only greenhouse gases but also VOCs, aerosols, cloud formation, precipitation, and albedo.
The HIKET session featured two distinguished keynote guests. Finland’s Minister of Climate and the Environment, Sari Multala, noted that the government-funded HIKET project is a strategically important initiative for developing improved tools for Finland and potentially for the EU to support more effective climate policy. Christian Holzleitner, DG Clima, European Commission, emphasized that key elements for achieving the 2040 climate targets include more flexible targets for Member States, the development of voluntary carbon markets for carbon farming and removals, and improved, more accessible monitoring systems.
HIKET Research Director Tuomo Kalliokoski (UH) highlighted that the project addresses LULUCF uncertainties in a comprehensive and policy-relevant way, with the aim of transforming scientific analysis into an operational digital infrastructure that supports decision-making, strategic risk management, and new business opportunities.
Professor Jaana Bäck (UH), in her presentation on the state of the science of forest-related greenhouse gas balances, underlined that it is not only the carbon sink that matters, but more attention should also be paid on carbon stocks and on the impact of harvests or disturbances generally. If forest carbon stocks (both living biomass and soil carbon) decline, the system shifts from a sink to a source.
Then, HIKET researchers provided deeper insights into the project’s research topics. Research Professor Aleksi Lehtonen (Natural Resources Institute Finland) highlighted that European countries show highly variable time series for carbon stock changes in dead wood, litter, and soils on forest land. When analysing the numbers, countries that apply models report carbon losses in dead wood, litter, and SOM for the latest years, while countries with repeated soil inventories typically report long-term average soil carbon changes. HIKET represents a substantial investment in improving soil carbon modelling enhancing GHG reporting not only in Finland, but also across EU Member States that have drained peatlands.
Hannakaisa Lindqvist, Greenhouse Gases Coordination Manager (FMI), highlighted that the satellite data used in the HIKET project includes atmospheric GHG observations that enable data-driven emission estimates from satellite overpasses but also land surface observations. These data improve understanding of carbon balances in regions poorly constrained by surface measurements and provide independent data to support the verification of national emissions and their reductions.
Tuula Aalto, Head of the Greenhouse Gas Modelling Research Group (FMI) presented the atmospheric inverse modelling method used in HIKET to generate independent top-down estimates of land-use sector carbon budgets and their uncertainties in Finland. The initial analyses indicate that biospheric CO₂ budgets for Finland derived from different modelling approaches using in situ and satellite data fall within similar, albeit still relatively large, uncertainty ranges.
Over 180 in-person participants followed session discussions. This indicates timeliness of the HIKET project for various stakeholders.
The session concluded with a panel discussion led by Professor of Practice (Green transition) Matti Vainio (UH), focusing on the main obstacles to stop the decline of carbon sinks and the implications this may have for the development of LULUCF regulation. A key question is how the value of CO₂ can be better integrated into forestry, and which policy instruments could support this, including pricing mechanisms, rewarding forest carbon sequestration, voluntary credit-based approaches, and the taxation of wood burning.
Both Sampo Pihlainen (Finnish Environmental Institute) & Matti Laukkanen (UH) noted that HIKET can play an important role in enabling future forest carbon pricing policies, by e.g. strengthening monitoring, reporting, and verification foundations, reducing uncertainties in carbon sink estimates, and supporting EU-level interoperability.