Growing ATFS Certification: Adding a New Approach; A New $1 Million Commitment for AFF
Our nation’s forests give us an incredible bounty of riches. They filter our drinking water, they clean our air, provide habitat for wildlife, support 1 million good-paying rural jobs and help produce renewable products we rely on. In the U.S., the biggest portion of our forests are owned by families and individuals, not by the government. These 21 million Americans are key to the long-term sustainability of our forests.
One tool that is often used in the forest products world to demonstrate sustainability is certification. It was invented as a market mechanism to encourage sound management of the world’s forests. Over time, it has also served as a means for leading companies to meet their forest products supply chain sustainability goals. Boiled down, certification demands responsible forest management while providing companies assurance that their purchasing practices are supporting forest sustainability. One system in the U.S., the American Tree Farm System (ATFS), specializes in giving family forest landowners the tools they need to be great stewards of their land while providing certification and assurance to the marketplace.
The American Forest Foundation (AFF), through ATFS, has been the leading organization certifying family-owned lands for more than a decade, responding to the growing demand for certification. We are, once again, stepping up to meet this need by strengthening and accelerating the growth and impact of ATFS. One of the ways we are doing this is by piloting new approaches to certification that reduce barriers to landowner entry while ensuring rigorous sustainability and long-term engagement of family woodland owners that leads to improved stewardship. We are pleased to share that WestRock, a global paper and packaging company, has agreed to partner with us on a pilot in Alabama. We anticipate other pilots will be launched as well.
Family landowners are the cornerstone of the wood supply to forest product companies in the U.S., supplying roughly half the wood to mills. Yet most landowners are not aware of certification and tools like ATFS that can help them sustainably care for their land. Even of those that are aware, many of these landowners have chosen not to be certified because it seemed too bureaucratic, too intrusive, too expensive, or for other reasons. We will not meet the growing demand for certified fiber and sustain America’s forests, if we don’t continue to find improved solutions to engage these owners. Our challenge is to find a way to meet both forest and marketplace sustainability needs.
With this pilot as the latest complement, AFF is also deploying other fresh strategies. From the Forests in Focus (FiF) risk assessment system we are building in partnership with GreenBlue, to our landscape management plans, to the increasing use of technology as an engagement tool, AFF is continuously innovating to tackle key challenges and opportunities, while increasing the quality of woodland stewardship.
Recently, AFF’s Board of Trustees committed a $1 million investment to enable AFF to meet these important needs and grow, strengthen, and increase the conservation impact of the American Tree Farm System.
Through this new approach we are piloting, in partnership with WestRock, AFF will engage family landowners in stewardship, through their accredited foresters and contractors, at one of the most impactful moments in their ownership: the time of harvest. This approach, using the existing PEFC-endorsed ATFS Standards of Sustainability, as well as landscape tools like landscape management plans, regional risk assessments and other tools, will support certification in harvest areas. After the harvest, rigorous monitoring will ensure sustainability and reforestation while focusing on the forest health risks identified in landscape management plans and other landscape-scale analyses. Landowners will make a stewardship commitment and be engaged over the long term through the ATFS community and access resources like AFF’s My Land Plan sustainability tool. This approach builds on ATFS’s existing tools and knocks down administrative barriers to certification while driving better stewardship on the ground over the long term.
We are marrying proven forest sustainability standards and systems with new technologies. These pilots will be part of existing conservation efforts. In Alabama, our pilot will be part of our ongoing work with WestRock and other partners. AFF will be engaging our many partners in helping evaluate the pilot(s) so that the approach can be refined for implementation nationally.
In addition to these pilots, AFF is also working with the ATFS network of committed leaders and volunteers, to identify and implement other strategies to grow, strengthen, and increase the conservation impact of the American Tree Farm System.
All of these innovation efforts, together, offer new solutions that will engage more family woodland owners in stewardship that not only help them achieve their own goals, but also provide clean water, wildlife habitat, and sustainable wood products for Americans.
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