Activities
The project’s scope is to earn, retain and expand the forest industry’s license to operate, innovate, develop and market forest products by providing a platform for leading global companies to address issues associated with sustainable forest management, wood sourcing, energy, carbon emissions and sequestration.
Our objectives are to improve member company operating performance, enhance consumer confidence in sustainable forest products and build stakeholder confidence in the industry. A key strategy is creating collaborative relationships with stakeholders for constructive consultation, the development of broadly supported solutions and joint action on key sustainability challenges, primarily via The Forests Dialogue platform and process. In March 2007 the CEOs of all member companies involved in the working group adopted a set of principles and responsibilities as a condition of membership. All participants will report individual progress via their sustainability reports.
Workstreams
The project aims to:
- Enhance the forest industry’s role in addressing climate mitigation and adaption under the UNFCCC by expanding sustainable forest management practices while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions through increasing the use of carbon-neutral energy from forest biomass and achieving recognition for carbon storage in harvested wood products as well as the avoided emissions benefits of product substitution.
- Encourage the credible use of multiple forest certification systems to verify sustainability and expand the market for third-party certified forest products and support improved forest law enforcement and governance to combat illegal sourcing, harvesting and trade in forest products, including the use of best practice wood tracing systems by companies operating in high-risk areas.
- Provide credible guidance to major business-to-business customers on existing tools and approaches that assist in the sustainable procurement of wood and paper-based products via the annually updated procurement guide and a dedicated information website.
- Provide a Sustainable Forest Finance Toolkit to the banking and finance sector to support investment in sustainable forest management and sustainable forestry projects globally.
- Primarily based on The Forests Dialogue platform and process, improve understanding among stakeholders and, where possible, undertake joint actions on the deployment of intensively managed planted forests on a sustainable basis; development of criteria and indicators of forests for conservation; restoration of forest landscapes and forest functions; implementation of commercial forestry practices to maximize poverty alleviation outcomes in developing countries; avoiding conflict through effective consultation with indigenous peoples, forest owners and local communities; and the appropriate scope and range of capacity building and financing mechanisms needed to effectively reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) in developing countries under the UNFCCC.
Publications
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