What’s been happening in the northern Pacific rainforest and the boreal forests in the past couple of years has also provided good opportunities to use these expressions. After a decade of environmental campaigns, mounting expectations of green performance from publishers and printers, and years of intense negotiations, the world’s largest conservation initiative was launched in May 2010: the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. Covering an area the size of Texas, the agreement is massive in scale and ambitious in scope. It’s an innovative conservation solution brokered by the 21 forestry companies belonging to the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) and nine environmental organizations, including Canopy. And it is the result of large publishers and printers such as Hearst, Scholastic, and Transcontinental urging the forest industry to “green up their act.”
The boreal agreement followed the lead of the Great Bear Rainforest (GBR) agreement, signed in 2006. The Great Bear Rainforest — the world’s largest remaining tract of intact coastal temperate rainforest — located on the west coast of North America, is a global biodiversity gem and home to the famous white Spirit Bear. As with the boreal agreement, a major factor leading to the GBR agreement was the engagement of key customers, including North American office and DIY retailers, the German Magazine Association, and the German Pulp and PaperAssoc-iation. These influential corporate customers requested a conflict-free product from forestry companies in the area; in response, after much negotiation, the GBR agreement was struck. Although it has yet to be fully implemented, the engagement of publishers has been critical in creating greater forest protection and sustainable product options in the area.
Newspaper publishers’ interest in these forest regions is understandable, given that Canada’s boreal and west coast forests supply a significant portion of North American newsprint. Forty-six percent of all newsprint consumed in the U.S. was once part of a Canadian forest. Many of the key North American newsprint suppliers, including AbitibiBowater, Kruger, and Tembec, operate forest tenures within the area covered by the boreal agreement and are signatories to the agreement.
Making the conservation agreement a reality on the ground — and the forest floor
Despite how challenging it was for environmental organizations and the forest industry to find common ground in both these areas, signing these agreements was the easy part. Ensuring their implementation — turning the vision into a conservation reality on the ground — is where the real work begins.
Newspaper publishers and other large corporate paper purchasers played a major role in the first step, by asserting their influence at critical junctures to move the two sides to the negotiation table and toward a shared vision. So, too, these same players will play a key role in this next phase. Newspaper publishers can help turn this agreement into real forest protection and a stable supply of environmental products by engaging newsprint suppliers to deliver on the spirit and intent of the boreal forest and GBR agreements. Newsprint producers are particularly significant players in the boreal. Should implementation of the agreement stall, forestry companies will need to be encouraged to enact the conservation goals. Likewise, when key elements of the boreal agreement are implemented, newspaper publishers will be called upon to support environmental leadership with their purchasing power. Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, Hearst, and printer Transcontinental are already engaged in supporting the boreal agreement’s successful implementation.
Successful implementation of the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement will result in a significant increase in the availability of FSC-certified newsprint and at the same time will ensure the preservation of large tracts of carbon-rich forest. Conservation is essential given that the boreal is not only a key fiber basket for the pulp and paper industry but is also a tremendous carbon storehouse — the equivalent of nearly 26 years’ worth of global carbon emissions. The boreal also contains much of the world’s unfrozen fresh water and is home to the threatened woodland caribou, grizzly bears, wolverines, and an abundance of birds, including the peregrine falcon.
The active market engagement of major paper purchasers has made the creation of the Great Bear and Boreal Forest agreements possible and has set the stage for innovative solutions to other contentious resource-conservation issues. By partnering with an environmental non-governmental organization to develop a policy that outlines their environmental vision and eco-paper objectives, newspapers can make this industry more sustainable in both senses. After all, what publisher doesn’t want to see their newspaper — and our planet’s wild places — endure?
Now that’s feeding two birds with one seed.
More than half the trees logged in the world’s forests every year become pulp and paper. Canopy (formerly Markets Initiative) shifts consumption patterns of industrial paper consumers so that their purchases alleviate the degradation of endangered forests globally and contribute to a more stable climate. The organization works collaboratively throughout the paper supply chain and has been working with the North American newspaper industry for the past five years.
Nicole Rycroft is the founder and executive director at Canopy. Tara Sawatsky is the corporate campaigner at Canopy. For more information, visit CanopyPlanet.org.