Sustainable Forest Management

Sustainability is the foundation of everything we do and combining financial returns with high standards of environmental responsibility is in very core of our business model. At Conifer, we see forests and natural capital as essential solutions for a low-carbon future. Our investments actively promote carbon sequestration – capturing and storing carbon in trees and soil – while generating lasting environmental and social value.

Our approach

We combine disciplined investment expertise with innovative forest management to turn sustainability into measurable results. Through responsible forestry, we deliver both financial returns and vital ecosystem benefits such as carbon storage, biodiversity protection, and landscape conservation.

Our AARI+ strategy is designed to balance financial performance with biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and recreational values in commercially managed forests. We believe that creating additional positive impacts on CO₂, biodiversity, and recreation involves at most a marginal trade-off with financial return. By making active, informed management decisions, we shape forests that are more resilient to the test of time and the challenges of climate change.

In addition to meeting PEFC and FSC certification standards, we implement our in-house AARI+ forest management strategy across all client portfolios. This approach not only builds on existing certification requirements but also extends beyond them to achieve higher environmental and management standards.

A cornerstone of the AARI+ philosophy is deep knowledge of each forest. Our forests are visited and updated frequently on-site — not just monitored from afar.These regular field visits allow us to identify both value-creation and conservation opportunities that cannot be detected through aerial imagery alone. This hands-on understanding ensures that every decision supports long-term sustainability, productivity, and ecological balance.

Active management decisions

Some of the active management decisions we take in our forests include:

  • Timely silvicultural work — such as tending of seedling stands and thinnings. We reinvest more into forest maintenance than the average private forest owner, ensuring healthy and productive stands over the long term.
  • Promoting permanent conservation — by actively offering suitable properties for protection under Finland’s METSO and HELMI programmes.
  • Adopting continuous-cover forestry whenever feasible, particularly on peatland soils. This approach extends rotation ages, reduces CO₂ emissions, and improves overall carbon balance.
  • Favouring high thinnings — which reduce the final felling area, support biodiversity, and encourage mixed-species forest structures.
  • Combining natural regeneration and planting to create mixed forests while minimizing soil disturbance.
  • Retaining understorey trees during final fellings to promote mixed forest development and achieve cost efficiencies in regeneration.
  • Preserving AARI+ micro-habitats — for every hectare treated, a 10 × 10 m area is left untouched, providing additional habitats for wildlife and enhancing the visual landscape.
  • Managing for the long term — our focus is on sustainable value creation rather than short-term gains. Through well-timed and carefully executed timber sales, we ensure that forests remain in an optimal position for future growth and value appreciation.