Worldwide, forestry and timber businesses appreciate that market acceptability of their products is becoming ever more closely aligned with their sustainability and environmental certification. Growing numbers of public and private sector buyers are implementing timber procurement policies and environmental criteria form a core element.
“It is amazing how many [timber] procurement policies are developing,” said Jean-Pierre Martel, vice-president of sustainability at the Forest Products Association of Canada.
“Europe has been a trendsetter, but that has now transferred to North America. It now makes good business sense for suppliers to look at all the elements of sustainability together with price, service and wood quality.”
Mr Martel shared his views earlier this month during the inaugural Vision 2015 Conference, a gathering of timber industry decision-makers and customers from around the world. The Vancouver event focused on the challenges and opportunities likely to face the forest products sector over the next decade.
Hosting proceedings in British Columbia was appropriate as, according to new data, BC has doubled the amount of certified lands in the past year. There are now 41.8 million ha certified under the Forest Stewardship Council, Sustainable Forestry Initiative or the Canadian National Sustainable Forest Management Standard.
“Sustainability is part of our social licence to operate in Canada,” said Mr Martel. “These certification systems are not static, and the fact we have at least three competing systems has been good. It has triggered improvements to the various systems and practices.”
“Because we depend very much on exports to the US, Europe and Asia people here took a leadership role in getting third party certified,” he added. “Canada’s [environmental] reputation has improved in recent years and its producers are now seen as leaders and more solution-oriented over sustainability. But in the global market, we are only as strong as the weakest link. We need to bring everybody up to the same level to ensure the credibility of the sector.”
Market-driven certification
According to Weyerhaeuser chief operating officer Rich Hanson, certification in North America, as in Europe, is very much market-driven.
“Companies can show a commitment to sustainability by enhancing their traditional financial reporting to include the environmental and social impact of their operations,” he said. “This sends a strong signal to citizens and to markets.”
Another speaker, Professor Benjamin Cashore of Yale University, described his work comparing timber harvesting policy in Canada to the approaches in 38 other countries, including Latvia, New Zealand, Germany, Russia, Brazil and the US. Among his conclusions were that the rate of timber harvesting is not a true guide to the sustainability of the forest resource. He also found that the success of sustainability efforts can relate to the type of forest ownership.
“Governments face fewer hurdles in developing stringent regulations governing forest management on public land than they do on private,” he said.
Prof Cashore also described how certification had become a tool for emerging eastern European wood export economies to raise their profile in the west.
Claude Martin, director-general of WWF International, stressed that, while the western countries have made progress, globally the forest product sector still has a long way to go on certification and sustainable forest management. A total of 91 million ha of the forest resource is lost each year, he said. “Temperate forests are increasing or stable, but there is a big decrease in forest area in the tropics,” said Mr Martin.
Southern parts of the Amazon, central and western Africa and parts of South-east Asia remain among the worst affected areas, with increasing incursion into forestry by agricultural development.
But raising the profile of certification in tropical areas is difficult, said Mr Martin, with large volumes of timber traded between tropical countries where the pro-certification lobby has limited influence.
According to Leif Broden, president of the Swedish Södra group, with wood product certification systems now so well established in Europe, the environmental focus for the forest products sector is increasingly switching to companies’ energy use. In fact, today, energy production from biofuel (such as sawmill chips and pellets) makes up around 25% of Södra’s profits and it generates 90% of its own power needs from the same source. It’s a win-win situation, Mr Broden concluded, with this trend enhancing the industry’s environmental reputation and the com-pany’s income from energy production offsetting relatively low recent growth in the timber market.
