At a press conference, Hautala said she takes responsibility for the move to demand the withdrawal of a criminal complaint against Greenpeace by the state-owned firm Arctia Shipping.
Hautala stressed that she would have taken the same stance regardless of which NGO had been involved.
However she said that she still approved of the actions of her subordinate, Pekka Timonen, who told the company's management to withdraw the complaint.
Hautala said her resignation was due to her providing imprecise and misleading information about the sequence of events rather than the actual content of the decisions.
The outgoing minister, who was on a working trip to Washington at the time the story broke, said she had initially described the sequence of events incorrectly based on a faulty recollection.
She noted that the shipping company was 100-percent state-owned and that as such the government was party to the intrusion incident. She also noted that a state-owned company has a duty to engage in dialogue with citizens.
Greens chair and Environment Minister Ville Niinistö said that the party will name a new minister next Wednesday.
