Healthy growth in sustainable forestry commitments

Last year, we published evidence of how leading companies are embedding CSR into their operations and across different departments.

Now, there are clear signs that sustainability has penetrated the corporate DNA even further. Conservation of biodiversity is now a common topic in the meeting rooms of mainstream businesses.

Global understanding has come a long way since the 1980s and 1990s, when sustainable forestry was synonymous with tree huggers guarding forests by chaining themselves to trees.

Thriving commitment to sustainable forestry is largely attributed to the advocacy and activism, as well as the corporate nurturing of INGOs such as WWF, Greenpeace and Rainforest Alliance.

Here are a few forest figures that have caught the attention of many companies:

Changes in land use are responsible for 18% of carbon emissions, with deforestation accounting for most of these emissions, according to the UK government’s Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change.

We are now losing about 200 square km - an equivalent of 18,100 soccer playing fields - daily according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

Only 5% of the world’s forests are certified sustainable. Of this 5%, half are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

DIY sustainability

During my visit to a sustainably certified Swedish forest that supplies carbonboard for Tetra Pak, I learned more about how companies are stepping in to ensure sustainability where protection is not mandated.

Lena Dahl, a biologist at Tetra Pak, explains the optimal criterion for evaluating sustainable paper sourcing. The FSC, Tetra Pak’s preferred certification, satisfies this criteria:
1. Certification of forest management and traceability
2. Avoidance of unacceptable and illegal wood (includes preserving ancient and at-risk forests)
3. Carbon Footprint (require green energy and low energy required per tonne of product)
4. AOX emissions/bleaching technologies (require best available ECF or TCF technology)
5. COD emissions (require low emissions of organic matter)
6. Waste to landfill
7. Participation in recycling
8. Certified Environmental Management System, for example ISO14001
Forest conservationists and development managers add maintenance of biodiversity and forest-dependent livelihoods to the list.

The WWF UK reckons that its Forest and Trade Network’s 46 members account for 40% of forest products imported to the UK in 2006. Members include Kimberly-Clarke Europe, Tetra Pak Ltd., Pearson plc. and BBC Worldwide Ltd., among others. The FSC has issued 940 certificates, covering 116 hectares in 81 countries.

The environmental benefits of regenerating and protecting forests are colossal. Healthy forests can counteract carbon emissions. For example, Canada's boreal forest soaks up 22% of the carbon stored on the earth's land surface.

Read more about sustainable forest certification options

There are more than 50 certification standards worldwide, trying to respond to the demand for sustainable forests or advancing the status quo. Other certification options are the lesser known to consumers Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes (PEFC), and North American Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and Canada's National Sustainable Forest Management Standard (CSA).

While certification is intended as a tool to enhance forest management practices throughout the world, to date most certified forestry operations are located in Europe and North America. A significant barrier for many forest managers in developing countries is that they lack the capacity to undergo a certification audit and maintain operations to a certification standard.

Countries such as China, through the China Forest Certification Council are responding by creating schemes that are better suited to their operating environments.