Industry Working Group comprised of 21 companies

Researchers from academic institutions and NGOs

47 Sponsor organisations from all sectors of society

Assurance Group comprised of representatives from all sectors of society

To define how commercial forests and forest products can achieve continuous improvement in sustainability performance, and to build partnerships that help protect the vast areas of forests not used for commercial purposes, especially the prevention of illegal logging.

Ultimately, the project aims to achieve agreements that will result in a sufficient supply of certified wood products in order to begin squeezing out illegal logging. That requires the resolution of conflict over forest certification so that the benefits of certification can be extended to all commercial forest operations as soon as possible, perhaps through the mutual recognition of quality forest certification schemes.

To build partnerships that are necessary to address forest issues that are beyond solution by any one sector of society - for example the preservation of “high value conservation forests” as havens of biodiversity, watershed protection and flood control, and recreation.

1994 - A group of forest companies led by Aracruz Celulose(Brazil) and UPM-Kymmene (Finland) initiated a study to examine the paper cycle - from felling trees to final disposal.

1996 - Final report, 'Towards a sustainable paper cycle'.

1997 - A WBCSD working group was established to deal with global forestry issues.

1999 - In cooperation with the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the WBCSD convened The Forest Dialogue (TFD). The Forest Dialogue (TFD) brought together forest stakeholders, including forest representatives, labor, the World Bank, academics and non-govermental organisations from developed and developing countries, to initiate a series of dialogues.

1999 - Twenty-two CEOs from forest companies formed The CEO Forum, an informal CEO-led ad-hoc platform, to discuss global forestry issues.

The WBCSD provides the process, quality control and outreach competency for the initiative. It offers a credible neutral platform for companies in an industry sector to jointly investigate sustainability challenges. It coordinates the work program, ensuring quality control throughout. Importantly, the WBCSD also markets and disseminates the output of these projects, generating momentum for change in policy and behavior across whole industry sectors.

The initiative is almost entirely funded by the working group members, but also from other sources (see Sponsor group for details).

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