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Press
release March 20, 2000
UPM-Kymmene
Annual General Meeting faces great decisions
1) Shareholders:
Company to revise environmental policy on wood procurement
Helsinki,
Finland - Tomorrow, on March 21, seven individual UPM-Kymmene shareholders
will introduce two proposals
at the UPM-Kymmene Annual General Meeting regarding the company's
wood procurement. Firstly, the company should abandon wood procurement
from ecologically valuable old-growth forests owned by the Finnish
State in Eastern and Northern Finland. Secondly, the company should
bear its responsibility in improving the amount of protected forests
in Southern Finland.
Shareholders
point out that the state enterprise Forest and Park Service continuously
logs ecologically valuable old-growth forests in Eastern and Northern
Finland.
Only
2 % of the annual wood procurement of UPM-Kymmene originates from
the state owned forests. Abandoning the usage of old-growth forest
wood would be a minor step for the company, but a great leap for the
threatened forest ecosystems.
The latest
logging conflict concerning state owned old-growth forests took
place in Kuhmo, Eastern Finland in February. Part of the timber from
the Kuhmo logging site was sold to the UPM-Kymmene mill in Kajaani.
The amount
of protected forests needs urgently to be increased also in Southern
Finland, where also UPM-Kymmene owns
great amount of forest. The forests of the company include protection-wise
significant areas. So far the company has been reluctant to the proposals
by environmentalists to volunterily protect valuable forest areas
in its possession. Shareholders consider that UPM-Kymmene should bear
its responsibility regarding forest nature. Therefore the company
should protect the ecologically valuable old-growth forests and other
protection-wise significant areas in Southern Finland.
2) Election
of board members - Surprise name instead of Ahtisaari?
Another
matter to be dealt with at the AGM is the composition of the board
of directors. The election of Mr Martti Ahtisaari, the former President
of the Republic of Finland, has already been critized in public.
Bad experiences
has already been seen in combining political and economic decision
making. During his term, Mr Ahtisaari promoted the costly and now
stranded co-operation between
UPM-Kymmene and APRIL.
The shareholders
consider setting another nominee for the board of directors.
More
information:
Mr Tuomas
Rantanen +358-40-5077 165, rantanen(@)siili.sll.fi
Mr Matti Liimatainen +358-50-346 2210, liimatainen(@)sll.fi
In Swedish: Mr Jan Kunnas, jan.kunnas(@)helsinki.fi
Read more
from the UPM-Kymmene pages at http://www.luontoliitto.fi/forest/UPM/
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