Join Our Call: UNFAO stop promoting wood extraction at scale on International Day of Forests
March 21st is the UN’s annual International Day of Forests. NGOs and civil society groups are asking why the expansion of wood extraction at scale is being promoted in its official messaging?
The International Day of Forests is organised by the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Forestry Division (UNFAO) and this year the theme is Forests and Economies. “Forests mean business” is this year’s official tagline and one of the main partners is the Finnish Forest Association, which is an advocacy group for the forest industry.
This is already problematic, but when we dug into the official social media toolkit for the day, EPN found statements that promote the expansion of the bioeconomy centred on forest resources; the increased use of wood as substitutes for other materials; the burning of woody biomass for energy; and projections of significantly increased global demand for industrial roundwood by 2050.
In response, on March 10th, the Environmental Paper Network and Biomass Action Network sent a letter to the UNFAO expressing deep concern about its messaging and urging them to remove it from their promotional material and communications. Today, we have published the letter publicly so that others can join our call in asking that forests be celebrated and protected, not endlessly exploited for wood.
Among other things, we explained why this political framing spells trouble for forests around the world, followed by a number of requests to review, update, and remove the following messaging from UNFAO’s communications channels and social media materials related to this year’s International Day of Forests:
- The emerging bioeconomy has forests at its heart. Wood and bamboo can be used as renewable replacements for carbon-intensive materials such as steel, concrete and plastics;
- Woodfuel makes substantial contributions to economies at both the household and industrial scales. Fuelwood and charcoal provide essential energy for cooking and heating to more than billion people worldwide and support the livelihoods of hundreds of millions more, while modern woodfuel such as pellets are used at an industrial scale for power and heat applications.
- Demand for forest products is at an all-time high. About 4 billion cubic metres of wood are being produced per year, with demand projected to rise as the population grows and the world seeks to replace carbon-intensive products with renewables – potentially requiring an additional 1 billion cubic metres of industrial roundwood by 2050.
We believe that it is dangerous to have this type of rhetoric pushed by a multilateral organization as influential as the United Nations. We are calling on NGOs and civil society to help us make some online “noise” ahead of the 21st of March to put pressure on the UNFAO to change their messaging.
If you agree with the Environmental Paper Network’s concerns, then join us on social media, tag FAO and other relevant stakeholders, and let them know it is not acceptable to promote the continued expansion of wood extraction at scale. We cannot accept a narrative on the bioeconomy that depicts forests as mere resources to be extracted, where bioenergy is encouraged and other short-lived and low-value uses of wood are promoted to be produced at scale.
The Environmental Paper Network has put together a social media kit, with resources such as handles, hashtags, suggested social media copy and images. From March 16th to 21st join EPN to make some noise on social media and call on the UNFAO and its Forestry Division to change its messaging.