As a speaker at the “Young Voices, Green Choices” workshop in Bucharest, Sara Yrjönmäki, Youth Delegate for Nature from Finland, spoke about the intersection of biodiversity, energy policy, and youth participation. Her story revealed the social dimension of the transition — how climate action must coexist with nature conservation and generational justice.

As part of Finland’s Youth Delegate Programme, Yrjönmäki represents Finnish youth at international UN conferences on biodiversity and works within the national dialogue on sustainability. The programme, supported by the Finnish Youth Council and relevant ministries, gives young delegates official status within government delegations, ensuring that youth voices are not symbolic but structurally embedded in decision-making.

From her dual perspective as a biodiversity consultant and youth delegate, she described the tensions between Finland’s strong renewable ambitions and the ecological cost of their implementation. Forests, long considered carbon sinks, are now at risk of becoming net emitters due to intensive logging for bioenergy. Large-scale wind and solar projects, often sited in forested or indigenous Sámi areas, bring new conflicts over land rights and biodiversity protection.

As she cautioned, renewables must not come at the expense of forests — cutting trees for new forms of energy undermines the very goal of reducing emissions, she said, capturing the dilemma of a transition that must remain not only green, but just and holistic.

Yrjönmäki also shared how Finnish youth organizations articulate collective positions through nationwide summits that gather hundreds of young participants to formulate Youth Demands — policy priorities on decarbonization, consumption reduction, and fair transitions. These are formally submitted to the Prime Minister and ministries, ensuring continuity between grassroots engagement and institutional response.

Her reflections resonated strongly with the Romanian audience, highlighting that the green transition’s credibility depends on how well it reconciles environmental, social, and generational concerns.

The workshop “Young Voices, Green Choices” was financed by the Nordic Council and it was co-organized by the Royal Danish Embassy in Bucharest, the Embassy of Finland in Bucharest, the Consulate of Iceland in Bucharest, the Embassy of Sweden in Bucharest and the Norwegian Embassy in Bucharest, Energynomics and the Faculty of Energy Engineering of the University Politehnica of Bucharest.