THE SUSTAINABILITY INTERVIEW
Fibre from healthy working forests is the company’ s most important resource and supports the resilience of its business model. International Paper depends on the long-term health and productivity of the forests it sources from, driven by the landowners who manage them and the suppliers that deliver the forest fibre to its mills
“ We need to have a long-term view of the forest resource to ensure the sustainability for the future, so that we can continue to secure the availability of our most important raw material,” Sophie explains. There are two key strategies in play here – both centred around stakeholder influence.
Having built long-term relationships with its fibre suppliers, IP harnesses trust to work with those suppliers to advance sustainable forest management practices on the ground. IP also works with partners on a landscape level to think about forest sustainability in terms of species habitat and biodiversity conservation, reforestation and wildfire management. Sophie adds:“ There are a lot of resilience concepts that are best leveraged by working with partners on the ground who really understand local communities and conditions to be able to have an impactful, positive impact on nature in those landscapes.”
Two such partnerships are with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation( NFWF) and the American Forest Foundation( AFF), both of which supported the forest conservation achievement and whose work goes beyond directly impacting IP sourcing areas to wider regional geographies.
Sophie says:“ The work AFF is doing in the Family Forest Carbon Program( FFCP) is pioneering new areas of innovation and value for forest landowners who are not just managing their forest land for fibre and an economic return, but for carbon and how that can translate into high-quality carbon credits that are interesting to companies like IP and a whole lot of other end users.”
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