Dear Colleagues:
Thanks to everyone for the hard work over these many weeks to prepare for the forthcoming Summit. One of our important takeaways so far is that an earnest desire for an ideal solution can quickly make things complicated, and the quest for the perfect can become the enemy of the good. Taking a step back and focusing on what is most important first can help us make significant progress now on which we can improve over time.
As we consider the landscape for using wood in the built environment, a few simple facts can help us see more clearly.
- We depend on working forests for all the wood in the built environment. In the U.S. private working forests provide 90% of our wood.
- Working forests are already carbon negative (their carbon stocks are already stable or increasing), and forest products markets have a lot to do with that.
- We want forests that are carbon negative to also be managed sustainably. Certifications programs are available, credible standards for sustainability, and they are routinely revised for continual improvement.
- Life cycle analysis (LCA) is not yet perfect, but it is getting better, and there is collective will to continue improvement. Because LCA does not address many of the issues of concern in forests, certification is an important companion to LCA to address sustainability.
Based on these simple facts, we can feel more confident moving forward if we apply a few simple approaches, such as:
- Ensure that wood in the built environment comes from working forests in regions where forest carbon stocks are stable or increasing.
- Reward private working forests in regions that are already carbon negative rather than trying to force them to become more carbon negative as a condition of use in the built environment. If we want working forests to become more carbon negative, use complementary market incentives outside of the built environment to achieve that.
- Use all existing certification programs to demonstrate sustainability in private working forests and wood utilization.
- Continue to focus concentrated effort on improving whole building LCA to increase its precision over time.
With these approaches in mind, a small group of us have prepared the attached simplified statement (retitled a Joint Principles Statement) as a starting point or primary point of reference for any ongoing effort to draft a joint statement following the summit. We have tried to be more strategic than tactical, to incorporate the concepts we have heard from you, and to provide an approach that will both inspire and unify us in collective action. We hope you find it useful.
Warm regards,
Dave Tenny (National Alliance of Forest Owners)
Jad Daley (American Forests)
Ann Bartuska (Resources for the Future)
Pat Layton (Clemson University)
Jason Metnick (Sustainable Forestry Initiative)
Michael Goergen (U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities)
Ara Erickson (Weyerhaeuser)
P.S. Vince, to be sure this is received by the broader audience, could you post this in the right place to make that happen, if this isn’t it? Also, we can also provide this as a Google Doc, if that is helpful, but we will need some instructions on how to do that. Thanks!