Climate Breakthrough Award will make it possible to enable peatland restoration and protection on several sites from Finland to North American boreal. Climate Breakthrough Award program is uniquely designed for social change leaders to develop, launch, and scale their new initiatives with breakthrough potential to address climate change. Snowchange work will scale up in Arctic Circle area in Finland, Minnesota, Canada and Alaska on peatlands.

Over the next three years, the Climate Breakthrough program will provide a $4 million funding package to develop, launch, and scale boldest new initiatives with breakthrough potential to address climate change. All in all four teams and leaders have been chosen for 2024.

This means initiatives that could significantly reduce global annual greenhouse gas emissions, affect entire industries or regions of the world, and materially change the lives of tens of millions of people within ten years of launch.

“I’m honored to welcome Alex, Eriel, Kimiko, and Tero into the Climate Breakthrough Award program. They exemplify the kind of visionary leadership and thinking that lies at the heart of our mission. We’re honored to support them in bringing their most ambitious climate action ideas to life,” said Savanna Ferguson, Executive Director of Climate Breakthrough.

Climate Breakthrough Award associated with Snowchange Landscape Rewilding Programme will establish a pan-boreal network of Restoration Hubs on peatlands with the following territories to start with

• Boreal peatlands at the Arctic Circle in Finland, including stepping stones ecosystems in Kemijärvi, Sodankylä, Savukoski and especially in Ranua. Additionally we will investigate the role of cultural landscapes in a wind power investments in Ranua
• Northern Minnesota and the St. Louis River peatlands
• Hudson Bay ecoregion in Canada
• Central Alaska with pilot areas currently being discussed

Launched in 2016, the Climate Breakthrough Award program is uniquely designed for social change leaders to develop, launch, and scale their new initiatives with breakthrough potential to address climate change. Climate Breakthrough Awardees have collectively secured over $236 million in follow-on funding from more than 90 different funders to advance their work. Combined, their Climate Breakthrough initiatives have the potential to reduce global annual greenhouse gas emissions by more than 5.3 gigatons by 2030.

November and winter are soon here. Koitajoki restoration and other rewilding actions are drawing to a close with the large peatland of Lakkasuo completed, as well as over 1350 hectares in Koitajoki alone. Visits to Canada and US pave way for the 2025 international work.

In Koitajoki this season was a transition from the original three-year project into a five-year project mark. It also marked important structural terms of the availability and strategic location of restoration sites – both state economic lands and national park sites became part of the project actions.

If we assess the main context of the project the number of peatlands restored and wetlands reached appr. 1358 hectares point (as compared to appr. 900 hectares restored in years 1-2). This implies a safe and planned pathway towards the 2500 hectares mark at the end of 2027. Out of the peatlands restored in Summer 2024 the largest one was Lakkasuo, a southeastern strategic landscape influencing positively one of the ELSP Koitajoki landscapes that has not been under work before. So both in quantity and location Lakkasuo served an important step forwards. 

We saw the comeback of rare waders and other wildlife such as the black-tailed godwit on Rahesuo which was a great positive sign. The Festival of Northern Fishing Traditions shared the experiences and knowledge with an international group.

In international news a series of workshops and meetings with a range of First Nations in Canada as well as in the US wrapped up the year of strategic planning. With more information in December Snowchange was able to review where we might be headed with the North American work in mid-decade and where the priorities lie. We spoke to the CBC in Canada on the role of Indigenous memory, oral histories and monitoring – available here.

October starts, Snowchange has a North American tour slated for the first part of the month. Pärjänjoki, a sub-Arctic river is emerging in the Landscape Rewilding Programme.

In early October Snowchange will have a sets of events and a tour of partner communities in North America. First visits will be made to British Columbia and several First Nations there. Then there are events in California. Lastly an extensive Workshop will bring coordinators, scientists and Indigenous representatives together in northern Minnesota to plan for the North America Snowchange work in 2025.

In Finland, the Landscape Rewilding Progamme has reached a milestone – 6000 hectares (15,000 acres) over 127 sites owned by Snowchange and over 55,000 hectares of areas benefitting from the work. Pärjänjoki river, a sub-Arctic river flowing over 65 kilometers including inside the Syöte national park has been the focus of 2024 with several sites added along this whole river and Snowchange owning a stretch of the river, now protected from mining and other industrial land uses. We celebrate Pärjänjoki and continue restoration efforts along this stream in years to come.

An American production company PrettyGoodProductions and Snowchange have finished a new documentary film about Koitajoki after three years of work. It is free to watch online.

Seining for a Song is a documentary by the American film director Thomas Miller, which deals with the history, culture and nature of Koitajoki in Eastern Finland.

The focus of the film is the country’s only river seining tradition, which renews the spawning areas of the endangered whitefish population. At the same time, the culture of the villages has changed and the restoration and rewilding efforts are under way.

The film is part of the cooperative’s extensive restoration activities in Koitajoki.

The film is available here.

As the late-summer sun sets in the doorway of a hundred-year-old barn on the shores of Lake Mekrijärvi, Eastern Finland, Sutej Hugu sings about catching flying fish in the waters of his home island – Pongso no Tao – which lies in the Philippine Sea some 8,000km to the south east.

Listening to Hugu in a rapt semi-circle are fishing people from across the world: voyagers of star and sea from Taumako in the Solomon Islands; Inuit hunter-fishers from the Greenland ice shelf; glacial dip-netters from Alaska; Saamí from the Arctic Circle, and Finnish fishers from waters salty and fresh, east and west.

This unlikely and truly global community has gathered for the Festival of Northern Fishing Traditions – a unique fisher-to-fisher exchange which offers a space for Indigenous and small-scale fisherpeople to meet in-person, share knowledge and re-charge the stores of care and confidence needed to face up to challenges from climate change to the devastating impacts of industrial fishing.

See full re-cap of the Festival here. See BBC coverage of fishing-led restoration by Snowchange here.