Assessing the Capacity of Nature Conservation Law to Help Biodiversity Adapt to Climate Change: The Case of Finland

Climate change is expected to place biological diversity under increasing stress and threaten several species with extinction. To combat the threats caused by a changing climate, several policy documents and items of literature on conservation biology have proposed a number of proactive measures to help species and habitats to adapt to climate change. This article presents the results of an analysis of the capacity of the Finnish regulatory system to provide an effective framework for the measures proposed and the capacity of the regulatory system to enhance adaptive management, which is considered important in the era of climate change. The analysis reveals several weaknesses in the Finnish regulatory system. Legislative changes are likely to be needed to harness the existing conservation tools to support climate change adaptation measures.