Metsähallitus created the Dialogue process as an attempt to accommodate
the national environmental non-governmental organisations
(ENGOs) that were dissatisfied with the earlier decisions concerning
the allocation of state-owned forests to conservation and as commercial
forests. According to the conflict frame – or problem representation, to
use Bacchi's (2009) concept – of the ENGOs, the issue at stake was the
decreasing amount of old-growth forests. Throughout the numerous
planning processes that had been going on before, old-growth forests
had been logged, which, despite the decision to protect some of the
forests, had lead to an overall decrease in the total amount of
old-growth forests in Kainuu. Perceived through this Conservation
Frame, the situation was growing worse, rather than improving (curve
A in Fig. 1). Through international market campaigns, the ENGOs had
managed to get German publishing houses – major buyers of paper
from Finland – to acknowledge this problem representation, and they
were now concerned that the timber for their paper might be coming
from old-growth forests.