What to do about Lapland?

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By Mikko-Pekka Heikkinen
     
      What is twice the size of Estonia with fewer people than the city of Tampere?
      Where does a mother giving birth have to travel up to 500 kilometres to get to a hospital?
      What has been a regional policy nightmare for decades?
      The answer is: Finnish Lapland.
     
The population of the region, which accounts for a third of the surface area of Finland, has declined by 26,000 in the past 45 years.
      In the next 30 years, the number of men over the age of 85 will be nearly six times what it is now.
     While the rest of Finland was enjoying the recent economic boom, the more remote villages were still nursing the wounds of the preceding recession. And they’re still at it. For 20 years, Salla, in the east of Lapland, has been the Finnish municipality with the highest unemployment. Now one in every four residents of Salla are unemployed.
     
Salla’s Mayor Kari Väyrynen sums up the situation: “The people grow older and fewer, and the state runs away.”
      Väyrynen says that during most of the year there is only one police unit in the east of Lapland, in an area covering 17,000 square kilometres - 60 times the size of Helsinki. It takes up to an hour for the police to respond to an emergency call.
      “The average waiting time of one hour is certainly not a sign of a civilised country”, the Mayor says.
     
According to Väyrynen, the Finnish state implements a “colonial policy” in Lapland.
      For example, most of the state’s forest holdings are in Lapland, but the head offices and jobs of Metsähallitus, which administers the forest land, is in Vantaa.
      The Mayor would like the state to ease up on its efficiency demands at least to the extent that those living in remote villages might be able to live out their lives in their home areas. New people will not be coming in after them.
     
So what should be done about Lapland? The Finnish countryside has been losing population since the 1960s, and the trend is the same all over the world. People are moving to the cities. Nobody has come up with a magic cure that would turn the trend around.
      But now we will try. Helsingin Sanomat asked five Finns what could be done to save Finnish Lapland.
      We asked for submissions from author Jari Tervo, Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Paavo Väyrynen (Centre), Lapland Hotels CEO Pertti Yliniemi, University of Lapland lecturer Sanna Valkonen and Greenpeace climate expert Simo Kyllönen.
      The wishes include calls for more appreciation for untouched forest and the culture of the Sami people. One of them predicts that ships from Asia will be sailing to Europe via the Arctic Ocean, once climate change has set in.
      In most answers, tourism is seen as an important part in the future of the north. Already now tourism is a source of prosperity in Lapland.
      Mayor Kari Väyrynen says that tourism is the only growth industry in Salla. He also has faith in mining, such as the Sokli mine planned for Savukoski.
      “They will be something really big”, he says.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 10.1.2010

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MIKKO-PEKKA HEIKKINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
mikko-pekka.heikkinen@hs.fi