Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI)

Standards: sfi made significant progress in developing the sfi urban and community forest sustainability standard, in partnership with arbor day foundation, tree canada, the international society of arboriculture, the society of municipal arborists, and american forests. The standard development process received over 800 comments from over 100 individuals and organizations in 2022. The sfi urban and community forest sustainability standard is the world's first forest standard for urban and community forest managers. It promotes nature-based solutions and resilience to climate change. It contains 16 objectives for urban and community forest certification and is applicable to cities and towns of all sizes, anywhere in the world. It is perfect for corporate, hospital, and university campuses as it helps maintain and enhance the many values of urban trees.sfi's 2022 chain of custody standard was endorsed by pefc after a 60-day international public consultation period and a detailed examination that included a third-party assessment by an independent assessor. Forests play a central role in the carbon cycle and with proper management, can be one of the most effective nature-based solutions to the climate crisis. Sfi revises and updates the sfi standards to incorporate the latest scientific information, respond to emerging issues, and ensure continual improvement. By the end of 2022, over 350 million acres across the us and canada were certified to the sfi forest management standard, and almost 50 indigenous groups, communities and businesses are certified to the sfi forest management standard.

Conservation: sfi president and ceo kathy abusow presented at two cop 15 events in montreal. She was a panelist on a panel discussion called Sustainable working forest for a nature-positive world organized by the world business council for Sustainable development, and she was a presenter at the mainstreaming environmental literacy workshop hosted by the canadian council for the international union for the conservation of nature.sfi issued seven conservation grants to address climate change, species loss, and water quality in 2022. Sfi is the only standard to require that certified organizations invest in forest research. Sfi certified organizations collectively invest on average over $61 million per year in forest research. This brings the total amount invested in research by sfi program participants to $1.9 billion since 1995. Sfi is supporting research to measure outcomes relative to water quality, biodiversity and species at risk, and climate changeranging from carbon to forest health.

Education: sfi Inc. Operates project learning tree (plt), an award-winning Initiative that helps educators integrate environmental education into lesson plans and use the outdoors to engage students in a lifetime of learning. In 2022, plt reached over 2 million students via more than 11,000 educators that we helped train on how to use plt environmental education resources.

Promotion and communication:in 2022, sfi hosted a hybrid in-person and virtual annual conference with over 360 registrations. The in-person event was held in madison, wi. Sfi also hosted its first ever green mentor cohort at the 2022 annual conference with over 20 mentorship pairs following a four-month mentorship program. The sfi annual conference brings together people from the conservation, community, education, and economic sectors who care about the future of forests and participation is open to all. Attendees included ceos of fortune 500 companies, conservation and community leaders, indigenous representatives, forest managers, university faculty and students, government officials, and many more. Sfi published a report sfi's conservation impact: a decade of success, summarizing some of our core conservation results achieved over the past ten years in three priority areas: climate change and carbon, biodiversity, and water quality and quantity. Sfi provides facilities, management and administrative services to project learning tree canada (plt canada), a non-profit incorporated in canada. Plt canada's mission is to use the outdoors to engage youth in learning about the world around themin rural, indigenous and urban communitiesand advance environmental literacy, stewardship and career pathways using trees and forests as windows on the world. Sfi is the sole member of plt canada and the plt canada board represents a subset of the sfi board. In 2022, plt canada worked with partners to place young adults into over 1,300 green jobs across the country. Since 2018, sfi and plt canada have placed over 7,000 young adults into green jobs, ensuring gender balance throughout. Additionally, sfi and plt canada have placed over 1,000 indigenous young adults into green jobs, from over 100 different communities.