Cities4Forests is a coalition of over 70 cities. It will present at the COP26 a "Partner Forest Boardwalk", in which Precious Woods participated.
Cities4Forests aims to help cities around the world to connect with and invest in the trees in their cities (urban trees and parks), in the nearby forests (such as green corridors and watersheds) and in faraway forests (such as tropical forests). Cities4Forests supports cities to better protect, manage and restore these forests. It provides them with technical assistance to develop local policies that take forests into account, knowledge exchange, and communication actions that enable member cities to effectively engage in the fight against climate change. It also promotes the purchase of certified timber and builds bridges between responsible cities and tropical forest communities.
Cities4Forests will participate in Glasgow at COP26, which will take place from November 1st to 12th. It will organize several side-events, and will present a "Partner Forests Boardwalk", built with FSC-certified timber from community concessions in Guatemala and Guyana. Precious Woods provided some of the timber used to build this structure. The boardwalk is a demonstration of Glasgow's Partner Forest program and will link several pavilions. The aim is to raise awareness of tropical forests and encourage other cities to invest in the conservation of faraway forests for sustainable forest management and climate change mitigation.
This initiative highlights the need to join efforts to effectively combat forest degradation. Precious Woods is one of the key actors in this fight: by producing certified tropical timber, by choosing to develop LKTS, and by placing the economic and social development of the producing regions at the center of their actions, Precious Woods and the other partner operators of the Fair&Precious program are paving the way for a movement that needs to be more global in order to be more efficient. The sale of certified timber represents one of the main sources of income for forest communities, although they face many challenges (low capacity to supply the volumes required by the market, little knowledge of markets, lack of logistics, ...). It is necessary and urgent that public authorities and civil society mobilize alongside the private sector to promote a truly responsible international trade of tropical timber, a supplier of an exceptional material that respects ecosystems and populations.
