FINLAND (News release) -- Stora Enso's ambition is to offer 100% regenerative products and solutions by 2050. By adopting a regenerative stance, Stora Enso is shifting its sustainability goals from minimizing negative environmental impact to becoming a net positive contributor within the defined focus areas of climate, circularity and biodiversity by 2050.

Stora Enso is also committing to new 2030 targets for its key sustainability priorities: climate change, biodiversity and circularity.

With its updated science-based targets, Stora Enso commits to reducing absolute scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from operations by 50% by 2030 from the 2019 base-year, aligned with the 1.5-degree scenario. Stora Enso also commits to an ambitious target to reduce scope 3 GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 from the 2019 base-year.

As part of its new ambition, Stora Enso commits to achieving a net-positive impact on biodiversity in its own forests and plantations by 2050 through active biodiversity management. A set of actions towards 2030 has been developed and initiated to improve biodiversity on species, habitat and landscape levels.

"Stora Enso uses its own forest in Sweden as a development platform for enhancing biodiversity. We will, for example, increase the share of broad-leaved trees and the amount of dead wood. Continuous cover forestry will be tested to evaluate its impact on biodiversity and forest growth in areas suitable for this method. Furthermore, Stora Enso will unify and expand performance evaluations that assess the quality of our work in Finland, Sweden, Russia and the Baltics in order to enhance biodiversity," says Jari Suominen, Executive Vice President, Forest Division at Stora Enso.

During 2022 Stora Enso will start to share data on its progress through a new online reporting tool and support forest owners with enhanced biodiversity services.