The new 2022 Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) Standards and Rules are focused on solving some of the world’s biggest sustainability challenges — including climate change. Requirements for a new SFI Climate Smart Forestry Objective are one of the highlights of the new standards.

Climate-smart forestry plays a central role in the carbon cycle and, with proper management, can be one of the most effective nature-based solutions to the climate crisis. Under the new standards,  announced this year on Earth Day, SFI certified organizations will be required to ensure forest management activities address climate change adaptation and mitigation measures.

Our hopes to mobilize forests for climate will depend on influencing forest practices across as many acres as possible, helping to infuse them with science-based approaches to achieve resilient carbon sequestration and healthy forests for our future. When it comes to climate change, SFI has the scale to make a difference, with more than 375 million acres certified to the SFI Forest Management Standard and tens of millions more certified to the SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard.

Objective 9 of the 2022 SFI Forest Management Standard defines climate-smart forestry as ensuring forest management activities address climate change adaptation and mitigation measures. This part of the standard ensures the use of best-available scientific information to require actions such as identifying and prioritizing climate change risks, developing adaptation plans, documenting how an SFI-certified organization’s climate plans fit within broader regional strategies and plans, and reporting annually on progress. 


Research is Key to Advancing Climate Smart Forestry
To advance our goal of implementing climate-smart forestry, we must increase our knowledge and understanding of climate-smart forestry practices. To this end, SFI has supported several climate-specific research efforts.

SFI has collaborated with the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement to develop a tool that will estimate and display forest carbon stocks and forest carbon stock changes across SFI’s footprint in the U.S. Through a collaboration with American Forests, SFI is helping to develop an approach for including soils in forest carbon calculations, which will increase understanding of whole-ecosystem carbon dynamics, as well as the impacts of forest management on the entire forest carbon pool. SFI collaborated with Coalitions and Collaboratives to investigate the potential for forests certified to SFI to generate conservation-focused returns through the monetization of carbon, water and conservation markets.

Sustainable Building Solutions and Climate Change
SFI is also committed to ensuring that the public understands that building with wood has climate change and economic benefits. More people need to appreciate that trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, sequestering and storing carbon while producing oxygen. Forests and forest products capture almost 15% of our carbon emissions each year, according to American Forests, the oldest national nonprofit conservation organization in the United States. An additional benefit of building with wood is that carbon already sequestered is stored for decades.

We are encouraged to see demand growing for mass timber, including cross-laminated timber (CLT), a prefabricated, solid engineered wood-panel product. CLT is as strong as traditional building materials like steel and concrete, yet it offers the additional environmental benefits associated with wood. As building codes change to accommodate tall wood buildings, SFI-certified forests and organizations are well positioned to offer climate-smart solutions.


Urban Forestry Plays a Role in Climate Change Mitigation
Managing urban and community forests for climate change mitigation holds tremendous promise. SFI recently announced the launch of a partnership to develop the SFI Urban and Community Forest Sustainability Standard, collaborating with five urban forestry leaders: American Forests, Arbor Day Foundation, the International Society of Arboriculture, the Society of Municipal Arborists, and Tree Canada. We look forward to working with a broad coalition of experts in urban and community forestry to move this important effort forward and to use it as another opportunity to create climate solutions.

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Sharing the Working Forestry Message Makes a Difference on Climate Change
Despite all the progress SFI and its partners are making on climate change, there is work to do to get these positive messages out to the public here at home and around the world to effect positive change. SFI works to ensure our communications help people understand why and how sustainable forestry is at the heart of so many solutions to the challenges facing the planet and its people.

Through our standards, our conservation impact work, our environmental education, and our extensive network, SFI has the scale to make a difference on climate change. SFI-certified organizations act as a driving force in addressing climate change impacts through sound, science-based natural resource management.

SFI is in a strong position to elevate the role of sustainably managed forests in addressing climate change based on our global reach and our focus on communicating the important role forests play in relation to critical global issues. We partner with the forest sector, conservation groups, academics, researchers, brand owners, resource professionals, landowners, educators, local communities, Indigenous Peoples, and governments. Visit forests.org/climate or contact us at info@forests.org to learn more. ■

Jason Metnick is Senior Vice President of Customer Affairs at the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). Jason leads SFI’s supply chain assurance work related to demonstrating SFI’s Standards as proof points for responsible forestry

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