Google has committed total landscape devastation in rural northern Finland, where a once-thriving boreal forest has been reduced to a bare expanse of sodden silt. Over recent months, an estimated quarter of a million trees have been illegally felled from a 330 hectare site near the town of Muhos.
On 23 October, the Finnish Licensing and Supervision Authority (LVV) halted operations at Muhos and a second site near the village of Otanmäki, where a further 150,000 trees have been felled. Hanna Halmeenpää, chair of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (SLL), labelled Google’s actions as acts of “pure arrogance,” arguing that the company has shamelessly taken advantage of Finland’s regulatory system. The two sites formed part of Google’s £11bn investment in AI infrastructure, for which they failed to complete the required environmental impact assessments despite Google’s Finland country manager, Antti Järvinen, claiming they had acted according to their “best understanding[…]of the legislation at the time.”
Finland’s cool climate and low-carbon electricity supply, as well as relative geopolitical and geological stability, make it particularly attractive to technology companies seeking to accelerate datacentre development. However, as these companies operate to serve global customers, much of the financial value generated will flow beyond the local communities and national economy that bear the environmental costs.
Finland’s boreal forests play vital roles in biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration, with critical involvement in the global carbon balance. Deforestation at this scale removes an important carbon sink and exposes soils that store substantial quantities of long-accumulated carbon.
Alongside the irreversible landscape alteration, is a total waste of resources. Since the trees were felled illegally, they cannot be sold to wood-processing facilities.
There have also been reports of wolf populations encroaching into urban areas around Muhos, which poses a threat to the long-term survival of wildlife populations due to displacement and resource shortages.
If plans to construct datacentres in these sites proceed, the environmental pressures are likely to intensify with their operation being highly energy and water intensive. Cooling systems withdraw substantial volumes of water and discharge it at elevated temperatures, which can be fatal for aquatic ecosystems. In Muhos, concerns have already emerged over brown water flowing off the site and into the Oulujoki River.
Furthermore, research has indicated that the land surface temperature can increase by 2°C near datacentres, inducing local microclimates. Such changes are particularly concerning in already-vulnerable northern regions.
Google has offered a mockery of a remediation measure in the form of a fee to compensate local communities for environmental damage and an intention to plant trees across 130 hectares. This covers less than half the area of the Muhos site alone, and replacing felled trees does not immediately restore the ecological complexity, biodiversity or carbon-storage capacity of a mature boreal forest.
There is outrage in Finland over how international companies can so shamelessly abuse the environment. It has prompted questions about whether current environmental regulations are adequate to hold powerful international companies accountable.
Photo by Conservation Commons on Unsplash
