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RESEARCH PRODUCT

From industrial consensus to environmental regulation: the coming of the Finnish industrial waste-water policy

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Abstract The development of the Finnish industrial waste-water policy is examined in the context of the national industrial development and the rise of the environmental movement. It is stated that up until the beginning of the eighties, a broad consensus about the principles of the waste-water policy prevailed among decision makers and authorities. It was a consensus uniform with the interests of the forest industry, the most powerful part of the national economy. Unfortunately, the forest industry was a bad source of pollution of the inland waters since the fifties. However, the long lasted hegemonic consensus started to break down in the late seventies and early eighties by an awakening of environmental protest. The wave of environmental protest took water issues as its main target. A major conflict concerning waste-water issues broke out in the Lake Region of the country, demanding an effective cleansing of the waste-waters of a major forest company in the area. This single-issue movement proved to be a success and, under favourable social conditions, the conflict had a broader effect on the introduction of a more regulative industrial waste-water policy by the authorities. In effect, rapid progress occurred in the cleansing of waste-waters, and the national forest industry is largely freed of its earlier questionable position as one of the worst sources of pollution of inland waters.