Great conversation as always on the message board and thanks for sharing the video Jason. I agree with Jerry on many points, and seeing that he filmed this video in a protected park, I agree we should continue to protect the ecological importance of that park. I obviously disagree with his assessment of SFI.
Moving the conversation along, forest management decisions need to take into consideration a suite of objectives. All forest certification standards (SFI, FSC, ATFS and PEFC) optimize multiple values. I believe we can manage our forested landscapes for all the reasons Jerry articulates, maintain forests as a carbon sink, and ensure we have innovative products like mass timber in the future. As Jad points out in this video forests and forest products capture almost 15% of our carbon emissions each year. This is why I’m excited for the possibilities to do more, and learn from everyone in this group.
The topic of climate change is critical to SFI, which is why SFI’s new Forest Management Standard has a new Climate Smart Forestry Objective. The objective is focused on climate change mitigation and adaptation, and requires SFI-certified organizations to identify and address climate change risks to forests and forest operations and develop adaptation objectives and strategies. The new objective also requires SFI-certified organizations to identify and address opportunities to mitigate effects of climate change associated with their forest operations. You can read more about the new enhancements here.
Carbon and climate change have also been key themes in SFI’s Conservation Impact work. SFI’s Conservation Impact portfolio of grants/projects reflect the belief that sustainably managed forests contribute positively to climate outcomes in a variety of ways, ranging from maximizing carbon capture in healthy forests, to optimizing multiple benefits of forest products, to ensuring resiliency of ecological systems under changing climate scenarios. A few of the projects are highlighted on this site - https://www.forests.org/climate/ and include topics focused on:
- Quantifying the amount of carbon stored and captured by SFI certified forests per year
- Investigating the carbon sequestration in boreal upland forests and wetlands
- Understanding how forests certified to SFI aid in fire restoration, sequestering carbon and contributing clean water downstream
SFI believes in partnerships, research, and focused solutions to these issues. We also believe there are multiple paths to get us there.
Thanks for the constructive discussion,
Jason Metnick