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Professor Hector R RodriguezSchool of BusinessMount Ida College

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Course Map – Topics Covered in Course• Society

– The Corporation and Its Stakeholders– People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals– Corporate Citizenship– The Social Responsibility of Business– The Shareholder Primacy Norm– CSR, Citizenship and Sustainability

Reporting– Responsible Investing– The Community and the Corporation– Taxation and Corporate Citizenship– Corporate Philanthropy Programs– Employees and the Corporation– Managing a Diverse Workforce

• Environment– A Balanced Look at Climate Change– Non-anthropogenic Causes of Climate

Change– Sulfates, Urban Warming and Permafrost– Conventional Energy– The Kyoto Protocol– Green Building– Green Information Technology– Transportation, Electric Vehicles and the

Environment– Geo-Engineering– Carbon Capture and Storage– Renewable Energy– Solid, Toxic and Hazardous Waste– Forests, Paper and Carbon Sinks– Life Cycle Analysis– Water Use and Management– Water Pollution

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• A forest is any area where trees cover more than 10% of the land.– Closed canopy - tree crowns cover most of ground

World Forests

• Old growth forests - cover a large enough area and have been undisturbed by humans long enough that trees can live out a natural life cycle – Home to much of world’s

biodiversity, endangered species and indigenous people

The linkages to this class? Climate Change and Stakeholder Management

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• Forests are a vital carbon sink • Whereas deforestation,

degradation and poor forest management reduce carbon storage in forests, sustainable management, planting, and rehabilitation of forests could increase carbon sequestration.

• The carbon stored in forest biomass, deadwood, litter and soil together is roughly 50 percent more than the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Global Forests and Climate Change

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• Carbon in forest biomass decreased in Africa, Asia and South America in the period 1990–2005, but increased in all other regions.

Global Forests

• For the world as a whole carbon stocks in forest biomass decreased by 1.1Gt of carbon annually

• This is due to continued deforestation and forest degradation

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• Logging • Conversion of forest to agriculture• As forests are cleared, plant transpiration and rainfall

decrease.– This leads to drought, which kills more vegetation, fires become

more numerous and extensive, more of the forest is lost.

Causes of Deforestation

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Logging is Old IndustryExcelsior Redwood Company lumber train and camp operating out of Freshwater, approximately 1890.

Ericson Photograph Collection, Humboldt State University Library.

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• Clear cutting - every tree in a given area is cut regardless of size– Increases erosion and

eliminates habitat• Selective cutting - only a

small percentage of the mature trees are taken in each 10 to 20 year rotation

Sample Harvest Methods

Clear Cutting

Selective Harvesting

Why harvest?

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• Wood products– Developed countries provide less than half of industrial wood, but

80% of consumption.– Paper, fuel and construction are the most significant uses

Forests Provide Products

Steps being taken…

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• Some places are being reforested (U.S. and China have had greatest gains.)

Forest Protection

• About 12% of world’s forests are protected.– Guanacaste National Park, Costa Rica– Chipko Andolan movement in India.

Women hugged trees to prevent logging and preserve firewood for their families.

• Debt for Nature Swaps - conservation organizations buy debt obligations, then offer to cancel the debt if the debtor country protects biologically important areas

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• In December 1996, in Humboldt County, California, Julia Hill climbed a redwood tree (which she dubbed Luna) to prevent Pacific Lumber from cutting down sequoias.

The Case of Julia Hill

• Julia lived in Luna on a platform 150 feet above the ground for two years until Pacific Lumber agreed to preserve the tree and surrounding forest.

What has been the industry reaction? Improve and Defend

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The FSC is an international certification and labeling system that guarantees that paper and wood products carrying the FSC label come from an environmentally and socially responsible source.

The FSC’s mission is to promote the environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world's forests through standards development and certification

Improve - Forest Stewardship Council

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Voluntary, market based tool for forest conservation.

Forest managementcertification

Chain of Custody

certification

The FSC label

Tracking of products from forest to shelf.

What Does it Do?

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FSC Certified Forest Manufacturing FSC Certified Paper

FSC-certified papers are tracked from forest to final product. The FSC label is your guarantee that the paper has come from a responsibly managed forest, verified recycled source, or other controlled forest friendly sources.

FSC Certified Paper

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Improve – Managed Forests (Video)

Side note: Managed forests… can we predict any concerns?

• The concept can be described as the attainment of balance between society's increasing demands for forest products and benefits, and the preservation of forest health and diversity. – This balance is critical to the survival of forests, and to the

prosperity of forest-dependent communities.• Forest managers must assess and integrate a wide array of

sometimes conflicting factors - commercial and non-commercial values, environmental considerations, community needs, even global impact - to produce sound forest plans.

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• With its small trees and few leaves that do the photosynthesizing work turning carbon dioxide into carbon, the new trees actually absorb less carbon from the atmosphere than the older forest.

Managed Forests – A Concern

Source: http://www.greenpressinitiative.org/documents/ClimateSection.pdf

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This pine plantation stores very little carbon and sequesters carbon at rates far below healthier, natural forests. These plantations have spread widely across the South and in other parts of the US and around the world. This plantation strategy directly reduces the amount of carbon stored across the landscape. (Photo: J. Ford, Climate for Ideas)

Typical Plantations

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– Energy consumption• Paper Mills

– 60% of Energy used to make paper (in the USA) comes from carbon neutral renewable resources produced at Mill site.

• Electronics– Electronics Industry, on the other hand, uses more than 90% of

fossil fuels based energy purchased from Grid

Defend – “Down to Earth” by International Paper

Source: http://www.internationalpaper.com/US/EN/Company/Sustainability/DownToEarth.html

How can this position be challenged?

• Paper vs pixels– Electronic raw materials

• Making a computer requires the mining and refining of dozens of minerals and metals as well as plastics and hydro carbon solvents

• The electronic industry continues to grow rapidly. • Based on current non-renewable raw materials and

escalating energy demands, this growth is unsustainable.

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• The advocates of the notion of carbon neutral paper essentially assert that the paper they make has no negative impact on the climate. There are two major claims made in order to make that claim:

Source: Jim Ford, “Carbon Neutral Paper, Fact or Fiction,” Environmental Paper Network: (2009)

Defend - Carbon Neutrality

How can this position be challenged?

1.The burning of biomass is ‘carbon neutral’ and therefore emits no carbon to the atmosphere.

2.Any biomass used to power the paper industry itself is not only neutral, but displaces fossil fuels and thus should be counted (again) on the positive side in their carbon ledger.

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• In 2008, the amount of paper used per billion dollars of gross domestic product decreased by the largest amount since 2000, while the amount of total paper recovered climbed faster than it has in the last 10 years.

Source: GreenBiz.com,“The State of Green Business,”: (2009)

The Bottom Line

• There are two reasons for this improvement: – Technologies that have

increasingly freed the business world from the need for paper, and

– The steady growth of recycling programs.

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A Balanced Conclusion

• Forests are a vital carbon sink• Deforestation continues at a pace faster than reforestation• Deforestation is driven by

commercial demand (construction paper and fuel)

• Industry is reacting and driving meaningful initiatives, but defensive postures tend to spread misinformation and therefore limit the value of the meaningful initiatives.

• Paper consumption (normalized to GDP) is decreasing