Sharing the Knowledge Wealth

Canada Advancing Sustainable Forestry Worldwide

With 10 percent of the world’s forested land, it’s no surprise that Canada is one of the dominant players in the highly competitive global market for forest products. To help maintain that position, and ensure its forest resources are available to benefit future generations of Canadians, sustainable forest management has been the watchword in Canada for many years. As a result, Canada has developed considerable expertise in the subject, including a criteria and indicators framework for sustainable forest management.

Canada’s Criteria and Indicators framework for sustainable forest management are designed to give everyone — from policy makers to the environmental community to small woodlot owners — the ability to track changes and trends in the condition of the forest and in the economic and social benefits derived from them.

Understanding the critical role forests play in the global ecosystem, Canada is proud to share its expertise in sustainable forest management — a generosity that extends even to its competitors in the global forest products industry.

It is that sentiment that explains initiatives such as Canada’s collaboration with Argentina to develop sustainable forest management practices with six model forests located in diverse regions across Argentina.

A model forest is essentially a ‘living laboratory’ where new techniques and approaches to sustainable forest management are researched, developed, applied and monitored.

Over the past two years, the Government of Canada’s Canadian Forest Service (CFS) — part of Natural Resources Canada — and the Canadian Model Forest Network (CMFN), have been working with the Argentine government’s Model Forest program. The goal is to develop local-level indicators for sustainable forest management (SFM) that could be applied to Argentinean circumstances. Through annual workshops involving the six Argentinean Model Forests, a suite of local-level indicators has been developed and is now being tested “on the ground” by the Argentinean Model Forests.

Canada has been working for many years — both internationally and domestically — to promote tools like criteria and indicators that support best practices in sustainable forest management, and will continue to do so. Canada and Argentina shared the results of their research at the World Forestry Congress in Buenos Aires, and discussions are already underway with the Ibero-American Model Forest Network to explore launching similar collaborative research projects in other countries in Latin America.

This is but one example of the ongoing cooperation between Canada and Argentina. Personifying the best of the Olympic spirit, Canadian skiers were welcomed to Argentina for the second consecutive summer so they could continue their training for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

Natural Resources Canada’s commitment to innovation and the development of new technologies supports Canada's efforts to make the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games socially, economically and environmentally sustainable.