rigorous for the forest products sector
to meet, they also drive more value out
of certification.”
American Forest
Foundation
The push for certification is taking
a d i f fe re n t a p p ro a c h fo r s m a l l
landowners in the US, where a
majority of America’s forests are
privately owned. According to Tom
Martin, CEO of the American Forest
Foundation (AFF), about 282 million
acres of forestland are owned by 22
million family forest owners. He says
about 60% of the fibre that’s used in
the forest products sector comes out
of family forests. (In Canada, over 90%
of forests are Crown land, owned by
federal and provincial governments
and made available to companies to
harvest under various forms of tenure.)
He says certification is important for
family landowners that want validation
that their forests are managed to the
highest standards. “That sense of pride
and validation is, for most of those
landowners, the biggest thing that
brings them to the table,” Martin says.
While it may seem like an easy sell to
increase certification on private lands,
it’s hard work, he says, in part because
it requires outreach to hundreds of
thousands of individual landowners,
each with their own values.
“ We’ve got to find ways to reach
those people with tools that let them
be exquisite stewards of the land.
That’s the challenge that’s left for
us in forestry. If we don’t do it, we’re
going to lose forests,” says Martin. “As
a conservation guy, the loss of forests
is a far bigger deal than whether you
manage this exactly right or that
exactly right. It’s much better that we
keep forests as forests. If it’s a parking
lot, we aren’t getting it back.”
Article supplied by Bruce Eaket,
Director, Forest, Paper & Packaging
Practice at PwC.
Family landowners in the US are “a very
important and very impactful group,”
says Martin. They think differently than
industrial landowners, which requires
a different approach when it comes
to encouraging certification, he says.
“If you’re an industrial landowner, what
you get up every morning thinking
about is ‘how can I maximize my
discounted cash flow, my net present
value, got to get that right‘,” Martin
says.
“Family landowners don’t think about
that. They think about what wildlife is
on my land today.
‘When are the birds coming through
for the migration? When are the
grandkids coming for me to take them
out to the forest?’ What drives private
landowners is the sense of stewardship
tied very much to the values on the
land that are less economic and more
from a conservation point of view.”
FALL 2015
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