Promoting active citizenship and environmental awareness

Introduction

The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (FANC) is the largest non-governmental organization for environmental protection and nature conservation in Finland.

FANC has over 30,000 individual members in about 200 local member associations in 15 county-based district organizations. The Nature League (FANC’s youth organization) operates nationwide and has about 4,500 individual members. Local associations, district organizations and the Nature League are independent, registered associations.

FANC is a member of Coalition Clean Baltic (CCB, a coalition of environmental NGO's in the Baltic Sea countries), the European Environmental Bureau (EEB, a federation of 132 citizens' environmental organizations in Europe), the World Conservation Union (IUCN), OCEAN2012, the Climate Action Network (CAN), Green Budget Europe (GBE), and the Taiga Rescue Network (TRN, a network of NGO's, indigenous peoples and nations working for the protection and sustainable use of the boreal forests).

Most of the work in the local associations and district organizations is voluntary in nature. FANC employs 15 people at its regional offices across Finland. Regional offices in Turku, Oulu and Lappeenranta have full-time district chiefs, the rest of the offices (in Seinäjoki, Jyväskylä etc.) have part-time employees.

There are about 30 specialists working in nature and environmental protection, administration and communication at the headquarters and at the Suomen Luonto periodical.

FANC’s headquarters is centrally located in Helsinki, and it consists of five units, which are the following:

• The Nature Conservation Unit;
• The Environmental Protection Unit;
• The Organization Unit;
• The Communication Unit; and
• The Administration and Financial Unit.

More information:

• FANC headquarters, tel: +358 9 228 081; address: Kotkankatu 9, 00510 Helsinki, Finland; personnel email addresses are firstname.lastname@sll.fi
• President of the Board Mr Risto Sulkava, tel. +358 50 560 2113, risto.sulkava@sll.fi
• Executive Director Mr Eero Yrjö-Koskinen, tel. +358 50 347 8778, eyk@sll.fi
• Personnel (in Finnish)
  

The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (FANC) is 'Suomen luonnonsuojeluliitto' (SLL) in Finnish.