Dogwood Alliance

Our Forests Arent Fuel (OFAF) - Policy makers in Europe and the United States are promoting the burning of wood as a renewable climate friendly alternative coal for electricity generation under the guise of renewable energy even though the science documents that burning wood releases more carbon than coal per unit of electricity generated and further degrades forests. Over the past several years, the forests of the Southern US have been the target of this growing global market. In response, in 2013 Dogwood Alliance, launched the Our Forests Arent Fuel campaign educating and activating citizens, policy makers and industry on both sides of the Atlantic to stop the further expansion of this industry. This campaign continued to be a major focus of work in 2023 leveraging significant results. Over the course of 2023, our campaigns successfully continued to delay biomass industry expansion plans across the US South. The worlds largest wood pellet biomass producer, Enviva Biomass, stated in its third quarter report that it may not be able to continue operations. As a result, their stock price continues to bottom out, dipping to its lowest price per share (below $1). Additionally, a large wood pellet facility in Adel, GA continues to be delayed in its construction. These financial struggles and facility delays are strong indicators that our campaign strategies are being effective. . In North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper (NC) signed a new Executive Order on Environmental Justice, increasing the political influence of impacted communities and the state EJ advisory board. Additionally, we worked directly with Gov. Coopers staff and state legislators (NC) worked with our campaign to strike language from a transportation bill designating wood pellets as waste wood. Across our priority states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama we experienced a significant increase in state-level policy engagement evidenced by the number of advocacy events held as well as expanding elected official support across the region.

Community Solutions (CS) - In 2023 we expanded our focus work to protect wetland forests through the community conservation model which is an inclusive and strategic approach of expanding wetland conservation, community organizing and environmental justice throughout the US South. Our community conservation model is advancing forest conservation through the lens of environmental justice. Working in partnership with impacted communities in climate vulnerable locations, our work uses social and economic indicators, not just environmental, to define the conservation priorities. Our goal is to advance a non- extractive, regenerative economy that is based on ecological restoration, community protection, equitable partnerships, and justice. In 2023, our work in South Carolina with the Pee Dee Indian Tribe and New Alpha Community Development Corporation in the Pee Dee Watershed resulted in two new successful community conservation projects in the Pee Dee watershed. Including a new 76 acre land acquisition in partnership with the Pee Dee Tribe, which now brings their land ownership to over 100 acres. We are continuing to work with the tribe to develop this land as a community forest and outdoor recreation hub. Additionally, we supported New Alpha Community Development Corporation to secure offer on purchase of community forest - 308 acres of mature forests on the Little Pee Dee River. These projects are creating a new narrative and strategy for advancing equity in protecting forests as a climate solution with community economic benefits. Against a backdrop of a Southern culture that has largely accepted the working forest landscape, Dogwood and our local partners are charting a new course that puts community-led forest protection at the center of our conservation agenda.

Forests and Climate (F&C) - The Paris Climate Agreement gave the world a charge: decarbonize all energy sectors and simultaneously remove carbon dioxide from the air. The best and most cost-effective technology we have to remove carbon from our atmosphere right now lies in the power of forests. Standing forests are the natural life support that we need to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change and protect those most profoundly impacted, often low income communities and people of color. Logging in the US releases large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere while simultaneously degrading the nations forests ability to provide critical climate benefits. - Despite these facts, forest protection continues to remain on the sidelines of the national climate agenda and renewable energy policy in the US. Dogwood Alliances groundbreaking forest and climate program is designed to shift this dynamic, by elevating the climate, forest and community impacts created by industrial logging in the US, while providing conservation solutions that place the needs of those most impacted at the forefront. Dogwood Alliance has continued to be a national leader, working at the intersection of forests, climate and justice. Our focus on deepening partnerships and strategic communications created opportunities to influence policy and policy makers at the state and national level. In 2023 we also continued to elevate biomass/wood pellets and industrial logging as a national priority climate justice issue. Key objectives of this work were to engage with the Biden Administration on elevating the biomass and industrial logging industry as a major climate and environmental justice issue. In 2023, our campaign secured a verbal commitment from the Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency to organize a Federal Interagency briefing on 2024. The agency officials agreed that the briefing would be held within a community being impacted by the industrial logging and/or wood pellet biomass industry. This commitment resulted from an event our campaign advocated for and organized earlier in the year, where EPA, USDA, MS-DEQ, and representatives from several elected official offices conducted a community listening session in Gloster, Mississippi. Additionally, our education and advocacy efforts continued to result in specific actions from the agency with EPA launching an official study on the environmental justice and climate impacts of the wood pellet industry and EPA Region IV designating industrial wood pellet market as an emerging contaminant. At the Federal legislative level four congressional allies actively engaged with campaign and advocating on our behalf - Benny Thompson -MS, McClellan - VA; Ro Khana -CA and Booker -NJ.