Forestry

Forest certification standards from 12 nations have called on the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to end its discrimination against wood and accept all credible sustainable forest certification standards.

The certification programs pointed out that wood is one of the best environmental choices for construction as long as it is from a responsible source, and that fiber certified to the 26 national forest certification programs recognized by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) meets this demand.

The 2010 wildfire season won't be over for weeks, but it has already charred more than 300,000 hectares of B.C. forest, an area larger than Metro Vancouver.

Ireland has ratified the Convention on the European Forest Institute. The Convention on EFI has now been ratified by a total of 22 European countries.

The ratifying countries are now Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the UK.

August 2010: The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has released a plan of work for 2011-2013, as a part of its 2008-2018 Strategy.

In the plan of work, CIFOR outlines its project plans and how they fall under the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research's (CGIAR) system priority alignment. The plan highlights collaborations with international organizations, as well as CIFOR's activities in national and international policy. The plan provides narratives of CIFOR's six projects and the suite of planned outputs from these projects.

I have been to the last two COPs (climate change conferences) – in Poznan and Copenhagen. They were both incredibly draining and frustrating, watching our negotiators move ever-so-slowly to a not-quite-conclusion. It is enough to make you swear off climate policy for good.