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News & Events
Interview with Darren Sleep: “forest management is necessary due to the threats of climate change”
The biologist and PhD in Zoology, who directs the SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative) conservation programme in Canada and the United States, gave a lecture at the School of Architecture of the University of Navarra.
How would you explain to a general audience what a certification program is?
Certification is a review process, so is not the person doing the work that give a certification but its an external body that comes in and verifies that the process they are using is a good process, that they’re doing things properly and sustainably and managing for all the values that we want, so it’s it’s an external review of of something you’re doing to give you a stamp of approval so when you go to the marketplace you can say with credibility that you are doing things well.
What is the real meaning of the word "sustainability"?
The concept of sustainability is quite simply the ability to do something today that we need to do or that we want to do without damaging the future opportunity to do the same thing so case of Forestry for example sustainable forestry means being able to harvest wood and manage for us without damaging the ecosystem services like the carbon that gets sequestered or the wildlife habitat that gets maintained by diversity gets maintain, the water purifying and the oxygen production all of that remains and in the future the Next Generation the next young people the next generation of people who want to do the same thing can still do it because the forest is still there, the forest is still healthy and the forest is still thriving and able to produce these things.
Is sustainability profitable?
There was a time not long ago when forests could sustain himself no problem and they may still be some for us it can still do that but with increasing threats like climate change and base of species we find that force that our marriage can help reduce the threats of those things by reducing fuel loads by reducing a dead trees and and trees management and maintain. In this way Forest Management can actually provide for things that a natural forest would have trouble proving for like a diverse amount of habitat and we often think that old forest’s for example, very ancient forest would persist forever but in fact we know that they don’t and in many cases older forest will be infected by pests and become great fire risks and then we lose those forest overtime. Forest Management can help reduce those risks and maintain forest health.
How does the use of forests contribute to their health?
I do a lot of work globally on Boreal forest so have a good understanding of the boreal forest, and I have a big understanding on the Northamerican forest. But I don’t know many European forest and things like that so so I would say that we do see increasing threats in particular from climate change that are causing increase fires and mega catastrophic fires that are causing lots of problems but overall the demand force is doing very well it is in some cases the unmanaged forest that are suffering more from these effects but we continue to work on those on those problems and get better on how we do things over time.
Do you have any particular recommendation for Spain? And for Navarra?
I do not. However, I will say that late last year there was a paper published by the ******* in November 2022 in forest ecology and management that said in particular for Spain other needs to be increased emphasis on climate, smart forestry, and and doing forestry it is adaptive to the threats in climate change. This is something that in North America we’ve been working on for the last few years I develop climate smart forestry practices it will save guard, the force against climate change, and maintain a healthy forest overtime and I can also say that our party organizations here in Spain is PEFC. They endorse SFI as North American products come here. But PEFC has done a great job in particulary in Navarra, where the most amount of certification has occurred in all of the autonomous regions of Spain, Navarra has the most certified forests which is good.
How would you explain to a general audience what a certification program is?
Certification is a review process, so is not the person doing the work that give a certification but its an external body that comes in and verifies that the process they are using is a good process, that they’re doing things properly and sustainably and managing for all the values that we want, so it’s it’s an external review of of something you’re doing to give you a stamp of approval so when you go to the marketplace you can say with credibility that you are doing things well.
What is the real meaning of the word "sustainability"?
The concept of sustainability is quite simply the ability to do something today that we need to do or that we want to do without damaging the future opportunity to do the same thing so case of Forestry for example sustainable forestry means being able to harvest wood and manage for us without damaging the ecosystem services like the carbon that gets sequestered or the wildlife habitat that gets maintained by diversity gets maintain, the water purifying and the oxygen production all of that remains and in the future the Next Generation the next young people the next generation of people who want to do the same thing can still do it because the forest is still there, the forest is still healthy and the forest is still thriving and able to produce these things.
Is sustainability profitable?
There was a time not long ago when forests could sustain himself no problem and they may still be some for us it can still do that but with increasing threats like climate change and base of species we find that force that our marriage can help reduce the threats of those things by reducing fuel loads by reducing a dead trees and and trees management and maintain. In this way Forest Management can actually provide for things that a natural forest would have trouble proving for like a diverse amount of habitat and we often think that old forest’s for example, very ancient forest would persist forever but in fact we know that they don’t and in many cases older forest will be infected by pests and become great fire risks and then we lose those forest overtime. forest Management can help reduce those risks and maintain forest health.
How does the use of forests contribute to their health?
I do a lot of work globally on Boreal forest so have a good understanding of the boreal forest, and I have a big understanding on the Northamerican forest. But I don’t know many European forest and things like that so so I would say that we do see increasing threats in particular from climate change that are causing increase fires and mega catastrophic fires that are causing lots of problems but overall the demand force is doing very well it is in some cases the unmanaged forest that are suffering more from these effects but we continue to work on those on those problems and get better on how we do things over time.
Do you have any particular recommendation for Spain? And for Navarra?
I do not. However, I will say that late last year there was a paper published by the ******* in November 2022 in forest ecology and management that said in particular for Spain other needs to be increased emphasis on climate, smart forestry, and and doing forestry it is adaptive to the threats in climate change. This is something that in North America we’ve been working on for the last few years I develop climate smart forestry practices it will save guard, the force against climate change, and maintain a healthy forest overtime and I can also say that our party organizations here in Spain is PEFC. They endorse SFI as North American products come here. But PEFC has done a great job in particulary in Navarra, where the most amount of certification has occurred in all of the autonomous regions of Spain, Navarra has the most certified forests which is good.
