Sinks differ from other mitigation activities because most municipalities have limited ‘own’ sinks and there are few policy instruments beyond appeals to voluntary action that would directly help to maintain or increase sinks. Land use planning could in theory be used, but until recently the preservation of sinks has not been a criterion in land use planning. Carbon Capture and Storage could, in theory, offer possibilities for direct action by municipalities, but at the time of the survey the technical and economic difficulties were still very large.
Lack of human resources was felt to be the main barrier related to municipal work on sinks and land-use in all the countries (Fig. 3). Lack of financial resources, the complexity and difficulty to include sinks in the climate work of the municipality, and competition with existing land use were also felt strongly in all the countries. In Finland, many of the barriers were experienced by a larger share of the respondents when compared to other countries. This may partly be due to especially forest issues being high on the political agenda, which has revealed numerous challenges in dealing with sinks. Especially the risk that the carbon stored will be lost was raised as a serious concern by Finnish respondents but was only moderately recognised in the other countries. This is likely to reflect the Finnish debate that especially forest sinks may be only temporal. It can be noted too that in about a third of the municipalities in Sweden and Norway it is considered an obstacle that carbon dioxide sequestration is not a priority area in the municipality yet.