Finland started preparations in 2012 for a systematic application of the IUCN management categories to all established national protected areas. As a part of the process, the national principles for defining protected areas and assignment of categories were agreed by a participatory process facilitated by the IUCN National Committee and the Ministry of the Environment of Finland.

In 2013, the results were compiled in a document Applying IUCN Protected Area Management Categories in Finland by Metsähallitus Natural Heritage Services (NHS), the government agency responsible for management of all state-owned protected areas. A shorter version of the original Finnish document has now been edited in English for the benefit of the international community of protected area administrators. Though not a handbook, this may serve as an example of how to go about applying the IUCN management categories to a national protected area system.

The NHS has also now assigned IUCN categories to all statutorily established nature reserves (552 sites) and other state-owned protected areas (339 sites). This work was based on the agreed protected area type based principles of category application.