The Business Of Sustainable Forestry Case Study Marketing Products

Most forest products analysts exploring the market for sustainable forest products have been searching for the green consumer. They have assumed that the well-documented consumer concerns about the impact of the industry on the forest would make consumer demand the dominant force propelling the industry toward sustainability.While consumers' concerns about the industry's environmental impact remain important, many other, more powerful, forces are at work that will lead to an overall market shift towards sustainable forest management (SFM). These factors are converging to shift environmental attention on the industry from process controls and recycling to the management of forest resources. Today, a greater emphasis on the entire life cycle of forest products is pushing environmental concerns through the value chain from retail stores and pulp mills back down to the forest floor.This paper assesses the major drivers and pressures on the forest products industry that are combining to bring about more SFM; thereby, significantly increasing the volume of sustainably produced forest products entering the markets.The paper first looks at push drivers - those drivers putting pressure on the industry, pushing it towards greater sustainability. Second, external pull drivers are examined. These are incentives that encourage the forest products industry to change its practices and operate more sustainably. The third section describes how these push and pull drivers are converging to gradually create a market for sustainably produced forest products. Finally, geographic and industry structure factors are examined to identify how and where the transition to sustainable forestry is most likelyto emerge.

This volume provides 16 detailed case studies of major companies representing each step in the commercial chain from forest management to retailing forest products. The studies, from around the world, demonstrate what the shift to sustainability means for businesses involved in forest products - some of the world's most important renewable resources. Introductory chapters characterize the process and the gains for all companies, organizations and business schools engaged with sustainable forestry.

A range of powerful forces -- increasing demand for wood, uncertain and decreasing supply, increasing environmental pressures, and growing markets for environmentally certified wood -- are changing the way the forest products industry conducts business. Forward-thinking firms have recognized the significance of these forces and are developing a new business model, one that will not only sustain revenues, but can ensure the long-term health of the forests upon which the industry depends.The Business of Sustainable Forestry integrates and analyzes a series of 21 case studies of industry leaders carried out by the Sustainable Forestry Working Group. The motivations of the pioneering firms studied are as varied as their characteristics, yet each has made significant progress. The authors of this book argue that the operations that have been most succeessful are those that have integrated sustainable forestry principles and practices into their overall corporate strategy. The book: describes the forces that are pushing the industry toward sustainability presents an overview of the new techniques and technologies that are making sustainable forestry more feasible than ever presents in clear, engaging prose company profiles that demonstrate both the promise of and the obstacles to sustainable forest management gives a clear-eyed look at practices such as certification and their capacity to transform the forest products market provides conclusions drawn from the cases by Stuart Hart of the University of North Carolina and Matt Arnold of the Management Institute for Environment and Business offers a succinct set of lessons learned The Business of Sustainable Forestry is the first book to present a composite snapshot of the business of sustainable forestry and the lessons learned by early adopters in form and language accessible to the general business reader. Forest and natural resource managers, forest products industry managers, and students and academics in schools of business and forestry will find the book a unique and valuable guide to an industry in transition.

Sustainable forest practices have become a pivotal issue within the forest products industry for a variety of reasons ranging from a broad sense of environmental awareness and responsibility to a more self-interested concern for maintaining the economic productivity of forests. Whether the forest products industry widely adopts sustainable practices, however, depends on their long-term economic viability. The development of broad demand and markets for sustainably produced wood products will be a key component of that economic viability.The efforts of retailers J Sainsbury plc (JS) in the United Kingdom and The Home Depot (HD) in the United States to stock their shelves with products drawn from well-managed forests place them at the forefront of this global issue. These large, respected retailers are uniquely positioned to merchandise sustainable forest products to the mass market and by so doing, lend credibility to these products and demonstrate the importance of the issue to the industry and the public. The buying power of these two companies is of such a magnitude that their purchasing practices can exert a strong influence on the forest products' industry worldwide.The initial programs of these two retailers and that of the 1995-Plus Group, a group of major wood products buyers in the United Kingdom, indicate that retailers and large wood products buyers will be instrumental in cultivating consumer awareness of certified products, as well as pulling suppliers toward certification and sustainable forest practices. A comparison of the activities of the two companies, which operate in different competitive, cultural, and political environments, identifies a variety of salient issuesthat will influence whether or not their initial efforts to market certified products are successful. The ability of these retailers to obtain and merchandise sustainable forest products is a barometer for the future direction of sustainable forestry.The material presented is drawn from a number of different sources and research methods. In-depth interviews with senior executives, wood products buyers, marketers, environmental managers, store managers, and retail employees from both companies were the primary sources of data. These interviews were balanced by discussions with the 1995-Plus Group, competing firms, and suppliers, visits to stores of both companies in different regions while posing as consumers, and supplemented with a review of published materials.

Forest certification has been widely accepted as a tool that would encourage industrial and non-industrial management of resources in an environmentally acceptable, socially beneficial and economically viable manner. Much has been written on certification yet five issues have been missing, which this book addresses: an analysis of the scientific basis for the certification standards; a formal and mechanistic incorporation of social and natural system sustainability as part of the standards; the rationale for the different sets of standards that are currently being used to certify governmental, industrial and non-industrial organizations; the success of the different sets of standards in assessing the environmental acceptability, social benefits and economic viability of the managed system; and, the difficulty of certifying small landowners with current protocols. Forest Certification examines the historical roots of forest certification, the factors that guide the development of certification protocols, the players involved in certification, the factors determining the customers to be certified, and the benefits of certification. The book also covers the terminology and other issues intrinsic to certification that direct the structure of standards, the similarities between indicators of different human disturbances within the ecosystem/landscape and certification standards, and, finally, a case study evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of existing certification protocols. Forest Certification is unique in its analysis of the scientific basis for the structure of the forest certification protocols. It documents the roles of human values in the development of assessment protocols but demonstrates how elements of existing protocols should be used to produce non-value based standards.

We changed our attitudes, we listened, we learned, we cooperated, and we took the initiative. - Granqvist, supervising forester, STOR.Over the past ten years, Swedish forest products giant STORA has transformed its forest management to implement and verify a commitment to sustainable forestry. The company has hired a staff ecologist, implemented ecological landscape planning, brought local environmentalists into its management planning, retrained its workforce, and adopted new forest conservation measures. Most recently, STORA became Europe's first major timber company to have a large block of its forests certified by a third party as sustainably managed.Headquartered in Falun, Sweden, STORA is one of the largest forest products companies in the world with 1996 sales of $5.9 billion. The company ranks fifth worldwide in paper and board production, producing 1.9% of the world's production compared to 3.2% for industry leader, International Paper Co. STORA sells primarily paper products, but also runs four sawmills and is involved in power production, banking, and associated financial operations. The company owns a total of 2.3 million hectares of forest, primarily in Sweden, but it has holdings in Portugal and Canada, as well.In 1996 STORA became one of the first large commercial forestry operations in the world to attain third-party certification. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the oldest and most credible certification system with environmentalists, certified STORA's holding in the Ludvika district. STORA's size and its importance in the global forest products industry makes its actions a milestone in the development of sustainable forestry. As STORA's evolution towardsustainable forestry indicates, certification has already become a strategic consideration for some forward-looking companies.

There is a rapidly growing interest in, and demand for, non-timber forest products (NTFPs). They provide critical resources across the globe fulfilling nutritional, medicinal, financial and cultural needs. However, they have been largely overlooked in mainstream conservation and forestry politics. This volume explains the use and importance of certification and eco-labelling for guaranteeing best management practices of non-timber forest products in the field. Using extensive case studies and global profiles of non-timber forest products, this work not only seeks to further our comprehension of certification processes but also broaden understanding of non-timber forest product management, harvesting and marketing. It should be useful to forest managers, policy-makers and conservation organizations as well as for academics in these areas.