Procurement_Challenges

Wood Summit
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Hi, I am new this week to the group and redoing this.

Here is some information about each state that covers some of the questions/discussion above. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. Not sure what is available for Canada,

State Action plans, Best Management Practices and Legality are key foundational components.

  1. State Forest Action Plans: Forest Action Plans - National Association of State Foresters
  2. Timber Assurance: Timber Assurance - National Association of State Foresters (includes Forest Action Plans and BMPs)
  3. Best Management Practices Best Management Practices - National Association of State Foresters (includes Forest Action Plans)

State Action Plans : With the 2008 Farm Bill, Congress tasked the states and territories with assessing the condition of trees and forests within their boundaries, regardless of ownership, and developing strategies to: conserve working forest landscapes, protect forests from harm, and enhance public benefits from trees and forests.

The resulting state Forest Action Plans—completed in 2010, updated in 2015, and comprehensively revised in 2020 by all 59 states and territories—offer practical and comprehensive roadmaps for investing federal, state, local, and private resources where they can be most effective in achieving national conservation goals.

Timber Assurance: Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, non-governmental organizations and their governmental counterparts have been developing systems and processes for providing assurances to consumers that the wood products they purchase originate from legal and/or sustainable sources.

The purpose of the timber assurance website is to present U.S. trading partners, governments, corporations, and other interested entities with information pertinent to the legality and sustainability of timber and wood products procured within the bounds of the United States and its territories. This information demonstrates realistic assurances of the low-risks posed from procuring U.S. forest-based products from illegal and/or unsustainable sources.

Best Management Practices: i t is estimated that more than 50 percent of the nation’s drinking water originates from forested landscapes. This means that state forestry agencies play a lead role in providing the United States with clean water. To ensure water quality is protected and soil stays in place, all states have developed BMPS for timber harvesting and forest management operations. Forestry best management practices (BMPs) are used to protect water quality during timber harvests and other forest management activities.

BMPs ensure that the equipment used in timber harvests and silvicultural activities like forest thinnings don’t inadvertently push sediment or brush into nearby waterways or promote erosion of stream banks. Some examples of BMPs include correctly planning and constructing forest roads (on the appropriate slopes, etc.), log landings, stream buffers, and stream crossings.

Most states began developing BMPs in the 1970s to encourage forest managers and loggers to take the necessary steps to protect water quality when undertaking silvicultural activities. Many states have similar BMPs and all states evaluate, test, revise, and adapt their BMPs over time. There is no federal law that requires forestry BMPs; in fact, the Clean Water Act exempts normal silvicultural activities from National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting requirements.

To provide a national-level evaluation of the effectiveness of BMPs, NASF conducts periodic surveys of all the state BMP programs. In 2015, NASF released a report, “Protecting Water Quality through State Forestry Best Management Practices,” which aimed to provide justification for greater investments in these state-led programs. Most recently, in 2019, NASF released “Protecting the Nation’s Water: State Forestry Agencies and Best Management Practices,” a national update on the use of BMPs.
All the best,
Pat Layton

23

Pat:
This is all excellent information you provided. In looking at the Best Management Practices section, there is a large focus on water, which is really good to see. Best Management Practices - National Association of State Foresters

Putting the carbon focus on this climate smart wood summit, especially for the Measuring Progress Group, as a thought exercise it would be really interesting to consider how these BMP’s would change if the top priority was carbon sequestration? What would change? What would stay the same?

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Several Items:

  1. Dovetail just put out a report on certifications systems and it is an interesting quick read. find it here:Dovetail Partners

  2. SFI is revising their standards (should be done in the next 3 months, but they have combined and added items to a new objective on climate smart forestry to the forest management standard. Find the draft standard here:Revision Process | forests.org
    Also look at the Guidance document on the same site that has an in depth discussion of climate smart forestry, begins about page 25 I think.

  3. Procuring certified wood - for FSC, SFI, and other systems, they work much like Green Energy. A power company has X amount of green power that buys from a producer or produces themselves. They can sell and certify to a customer(s) that they are getting green power but they can only sell up to X amount. What the customer gets in their building is whatever power is flowing through the line going to the customer’s location. The power running their lights may or may not have been produced by a specific or even any green power plant. But the fact that someone wants to buy green power encourages the energy company to increase their production and/or purchases of green power to the overall supply they provide.

For wood it is the same, a company buys wood from certified forests and that is X amount. The company can the sell and certify chain of custody on up to X amount. The individual board you buy may or may not have come from a certified forests. But the amount of certified wood goes up overall and that is a great thing.

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This is the same for green energy, so how do you source that?

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“Green energy” or renewable energy procurement is tracked using Renewable Energy Credit / Certificates (RECs). More can be found from the resources here: Renewable Energy Certificates | CRS
Intro video: What Is a Renewable Energy Certificate? - YouTube

There are a variety of markets for RECs and there are additional criteria that can be put on the RECs to meet certain goals (e.g. vintage, location, generation source).

I’m happy to go into this future if it is helpful and do find the analogy an interesting comparison, which might identify potential solutions for the procurement challenges.

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Hi folks,

Regarding “climate smart” as a designation, the latest results I have seen from David Diaz and Ecotrust (hope I don’t get this wrong, David) were based on measured carbon stock changes (from satellite remote sensing data) and reported wood production. This showed a pair of bell curves for carbon stored per board foot of wood produced, one for FSC and one for conventionally managed forests. So in other words, there’s a decent range of carbon storage within either management system (recognizing that within those two spheres are many different actual management regimes, and a lot of other variables as well). Also, the two curves had a fair amount of overlap, so you can’t say that just because someone is doing FSC they are storing more carbon per board foot.

What this work also suggests is that it may relatively soon become possible to measure the carbon stored in forests rather than rely on management practices as a proxy for carbon storage. Perhaps we could consider a future definition of “climate smart” forestry based on quantified carbon storage (probably as a % of total possible storage on a stive given the region/subregion, species mix, and other factors)?

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I think there were a number of approaches discussed during the CLF sessions last Spring. I urge people to take a look at those. They were very informative.

One area which I think is we should examine is that of metrics. Are we measuring carbon growth/retention by area? Volume extracted? As an example, if a management regime leaves a percentage of area as leave trees, that certainly increases the retained carbon on an area basis, but increases the disturbed area if the impact is applied on a volume logged basis. I don’t know which is more climate smart, but that is an area for discussion with those doing the evaluations. As an example — Imagine I log 10 acres and leave 30% of standing volume on site. That would show a better result on an impact per area basis. However, to get the same volume of material, I would have to disturb 43% more land.

Which is better? Does one site have better opportunities for regrowth than the other? Is fire risk managed? What are there specific sites where this is relevant? Are there other metrics that get us closer to understanding what we are trying to achieve? Do the regulations / certification schemes have an impact? If so, by how much? And is that difference significant relative to other materials?

I think we need to examine the various metrics to ensure we are not kidding ourselves. Well-intentioned but naive decisions are not something the environment will accommodate just because we didn’t think it through.

Peter Moonen

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@ Raphael, in addition to carbon storage, I think that ecological resilience and adaptation is another key metric for ‘climate smart’ forestry – and it’s often but not always congruent with “carbon-friendly” forestry – David D. makes this point toward the end of this presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtcbsY9BXT0&feature=youtu.be

@Peter, your points are well taken, but you are assuming that we need to maintain the same production volumes as we are today. It may be that in order to be climate-smarter, we need to reduce production/consumption of forest products. Also, we know that in many cases we could get more timber volume per acre by extending rotations without changing anything else – and the barrier is the imperative for many large forestland owners to maximize ROI - if we can change the economics through carbon credits or tax credits or another means, then we could increase forest carbon stores AND yields – although we might need to accept lower production levels for the time that we are extending the rotations (although this could also be phased to reduce the pain)

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Oh, and here’s the link to the CLF series for those who want to follow up on Peter’s suggestion – which is a good one!

https://carbonleadershipforum.org/wood-carbon-seminars/

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@ Jason.

I don’t disagree at all.

My point is we have to know the implications of our choices and be as aware as we can. Good intentions based on aspirations and emotions are not necessarily the best way to go.

As far as production and material extraction, that is mostly market driven. In Canada, our Annual Allowable Cut volume is not determined by what the market can take, it is based on the capacity of the forest. I think that is more in tune with the sentiments of this group.

While there are significant ant opportunities to enhance the capacity of the land base that is going to be supplying the wood, we also may not want to drastically reduce production of wood products if the construction sector is increasing its use of materials. We’d like to see wood go into higher and better use, rather than single or basic use. That’s what mass timber does.

The benefit of building with wood can be significant and a shift in construction growth can only be addressed by humans expecting and demanding less, modifying extending buildings to extend life, and perhaps that is outside of the scope of the summit, but it is relevant in regards to materials demand.

On a personal note, I live in a small rural community. It was big transition from living in downtown Vancouver. It took me a while to realize my small town has virtually everything I NEED, even if it doesn’t have everything I THINK I WANT. Perhaps that’s part of the problem with respect to construction demand.

Peter

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I love this - thank you, Peter

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You are most welcome.

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Helen,
You might find this paper by Dovetail Partners valuable: Dovetail Partners

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Hi Lisa and Helen - here is a more recent piece from Dovetail Partners on the Forest Certification Experience. Pay Layton posted this on Feb 18. Its worth reading.

Dovetail Forest Certification Experience Feb 2021.pdf (3.8 MB)

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@hwentzel @lisa.podesto Thanks, looking forward to reading!

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Hi y’all,
I encourage you to take a look at the Climate Smart new section of the SFI standards (forest management - obj 8) More importantly for those of you looking for data, regulations and other information please see the guidelines document that is also on the link below and look at pages 25 - 31. it is an incredible source of information. here is the link to the November versions of these in Track Change -Revision Process | forests.org. I think you will find it very helpful to review this. Climate Smart is not just about maximizing carbon. Forests are not like corn where productivity is everything. They are a public good no matter who owns them. The management of a public good is more that just making building products. The concept of procurement from certified or well-managed forests is a great goal but please understand that forests produce so much more than wood. I would not ever want to have millions of acres of forests growing just for the goal carbon sequestration as operating on that goal will leave out so many other reasons about why we have and manage forests (and by manage I do not mean grow plantations (which by the way are a small percentage of forests in the US and Canada)). Have any of you read The Sand County Almanac or thought about the Land Ethic that foresters are trained to uphold?

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You are awesome!

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I just added the attached “Menu” to our google drive folder. This approach incorporates elements of the work that Scott and Jacob presented in yesterday’s meeting, but it attempts to simplify, both for the sake of avoiding lots of extra work and to try to make it easier for busy project teams to make informed choices without dumbing things down too much. If we have time, I’d be interested to walk through this in our next meeting. In the meantime, if folks have suggestions or comments, feel free to mark up the document and send them to me directly: jason.grant@wwfus.orgCimate Smart Wood Procurement MENU.docx (17.8 KB)

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Hello Hardy. Thanks for your thoughts. It may be helpful to focus on the values each standard provides. To do this, it may be helpful to highlight the places in any of the certification systems where criteria and indicators deliver climatesmart forestry. (For example, increased conservation around fish and non-fish streams or retention for landowners managing single age stands post harvest). I could do this for FSC but am less familiar with what folks more familiar with SFI would hold up as climatesmart forestry above what a project would get by creating a regional sourcing requirement to support jobs and forestlands in their local economy. Do you have anything you would suggest I look at?

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As a followup to the conversation yesterday, here’s a link to the online spreadsheet I shared, which is also in our shared google drive folder. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uYXVeTnGCn0WmUT09kFrDeG4h8MLjSAFga3tZ5ywGbo/edit?usp=sharing

This is an attempt to address the challenge of understanding what climate smart forestry really is, and how management structures fit into them.

Keep in mind that we don’t have to fill this out completely, and that our first priority is to determine the types of information we need for this type of ‘cheat sheet’ or quick comparison. 2nd priority would be to fill it out partially as a proof of concept. Some of the references that have been posted in this thread can be used to help populate certain sections.

One thing I wanted to acknowledge based on comments is the potential complexity this gets into. There are a lot of factors at play and its easy to default to a “it depends” answer, but I think we can make substantial progress in cutting through the complexity, or at least outlining the issues around it. For instance, site class index impacts greatly the productivity, and thus carbon of a stand. However, we’re more interested in the harvest variables that affect carbon. While it’s true that site index affects carbon, for two sites with the same site index, rotational lengths or retention will affect the carbon in the same manner. Or for slope and buffers, regardless of if its a steep site or flat, the size of the buffer will impact carbon. Wider or more light-touch buffers impact carbon stock change, and steepness of slope will impact buffer requirements. We don’t have to be precise (just yet), but try to identify which factors increase carbon while not worrying about quantifying precisely by how much. It might be helpful to split the table into factors that affect overall carbon stocks (slope, site index, species, etc.), and harvest/treatment methods that increase carbon retained on the landscape (retention, rotation, buffers, etc.).

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