The Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) is celebrating the international recognition for the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA) at the World Forest Congress now going on in Durban, South Africa.

An interactive side event called From Conflict to Collaboration featured a huge 8 by 11-metre floor map of Canada’s boreal forest detailing everything from caribou habitat to the rural communities that rely on the forest sector. Panel members at the event includedMark Hubert, the Vice President of Environmental Leadership at FPAC and Éric Hébert-Daly of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. They talked about the global relevance of the CBFA, the world’s largest conservation agreement, which integrates both economic and environmental values.

“We are pleased that delegates to the World Forest Congress are learning more about the CBFA.  It fits well into the congress theme of Forests and People: Investing in a Sustainable Future,” says David Lindsay, the President and CEO of FPAC. “Certainly the CBFA’s collaborative model has the potential to be applied globally.”

At the event, the CBFA representatives were joined by representatives of the African and Ibero-American Model Forest Networks who added a global dimension to the discussion by discussing their experience with collaboration.

The CBFA is an unprecedented initiative that seeks to conserve significant areas of Canada’s vast boreal forest, protect threatened woodland caribou and ensure a healthy forest sector by laying a foundation for the future prosperity of the industry and the communities that rely on it. Learn more about the CBFA at: http://cbfa-efbc.ca/

FPAC provides a voice for Canada’s wood, pulp, and paper producers nationally and internationally in government, trade, and environmental affairs. The $58-billion-a-year forest products industry represents 2% of Canada’s GDP and is one of Canada’s largest employers operating in hundreds of communities and providing 230,000 direct jobs across the country.