Pilot Projects 2023 Spring Newsletter

Dear friends of Pilot Projects,

What a year it’s been already! Our team is excited to share several new projects that creatively align forest conservation with the needs of people from diverse geographies, and with important global movements like urbanization, low-carbon construction, biodiversity protection, and climate resilience. We hope you will join us at one of these exciting spring or summer events.

CO-CREATING THE “CONSERVATION TIMBER” VALUE CHAIN

In partnership with Rainforest Alliance, we are planning an immersive experience connecting thriving tropical forests, local development and community livelihoods: The Selva Maya Conservation Timber Summit, to be held in Tulum, Mexico on June 15-16, 2023. This extraordinary event will bring diverse stakeholders together to reinvent a resilient value chain that connects the rapidly developing regional real estate sector with the ejidos community-based conservation system. A new mutually beneficial value chain will demonstrate that private sector investment can share the mission and benefit of tropical forests conservation. Representatives from several key ejidos, developers, government, and a range of NGOs will collaborate, sign contracts and strengthen strategic alliances that become the building blocks of sustainable development in the Selva Maya. Spaces are limited so rsvp ASAP.

JOIN US AT THE 2023 UIA, WORLD ARCHITECTS’ CONGRESS IN COPENHAGEN

Next, we are very excited to announce this year’s Wood at Work conference in partnership with Cities4Forests and the Forest Stewardship Council, at the UIA World Congress of Architects between July 2 - 6 in Copenhagen! Our team will be co-located in the FSC lounge, and will host a series of timely and vital conversations addressing wood sourcing and sustainability, conservation timber, carbon storage, mass timber impacts, sourcing standardization, and more. Many of you are already deeply engaged in the W@W network, and these topics. For those that are, this will be a reunion to deepen our ongoing collaborations, as well as a great opportunity to connect with new leaders in the field.

In-person attendees are also invited to join us for our Partner Forest side event, the Copenhagen Partner Forest Launch which will take place in Copenhagen harbor Teglværkshavnen on July 4th at 18.30. Join us for cocktails and networking on the water while exploring an urban floating pavilion built with “conservation timber” from community managed tropical forests. The Launch will be jointly hosted by project partners: Cities4Forests, CPH Raft, Pilot Projects, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the Municipality of Copenhagen, and LevasForest.

We invite you to purchase UIA tickets for the in-person conference, and register for the Partner Forest side event.

“THRIVING FORESTS” CONTINUES AT 2023 RAIC ANNUAL CONFERENCE

We'll be co-hosting the next chapter of Thriving Forests and Regenerative Built Environments on May 5 at 9:30am MST at the annual RAIC Conference, May 2-6 in Calgary, Alberta.

One of society’s greatest challenges of the next three decades will be to balance the need for low-carbon urban construction to serve global development, with the need to conserve and restore thriving forests around the world. Canada will increasingly find itself in the center of this global crucible, and will be called upon to provide “wood to the world” so that expanding cities around the globe can avoid the worst climate impacts of building with concrete and steel. Architects can offer unique leverage in these systems changes. As mass timber technologies make it possible to replace high carbon-emitting materials with wood structures in dense urban settings the question of wood sustainability is paramount. This moderated expert panel discussion invites architects who are invested in the future of forests, climate, and biodiversity to learn about, discuss, and innovate together on these issues. Register here!

COLLABORATION OPPORTUNITIES - JOIN US - SPREAD THE WORD

SEEKING: Sustainable Procurement Policy experts in Europe! On behalf of Galway County Council’s recent engagement with Cities4Forests’ “Partner Forest Program”, Pilot Projects Collaborative and Galway County Council (GCC) are seeking a public procurement consultant to co-create a comprehensive Green and Sustainable Procurement policy relating to wood specification and purchases for the built environment in Galway County, Ireland. This new policy will be based on Cities4Forests “Sustainable Wood for Cities” guide (SW4C) which contains detailed processes and “pathways” for evaluating sustainable wood from various sources. The purpose of the attached RFQ is to identify a consultant or team who can build on the SW4C platform and tailor it to the needs of the GCC and the latest EU Sustainable and Green Procurement goals and framework. The RFQ will remain open for submissions until May 15, 2023. Throughout this period, submissions will be reviewed as they are received to ensure that a suitable candidate/candidates can be identified before the work commences in June of 2023. All submissions should be sent to procurement@pilot-projects.org. SEEKING: Conservation timber suppliers in Europe! We are excited to announce that our Partner Forest Program is working with the Atlantic Technological University (ATU) in Galway, Ireland, to launch a sustainable tropical wood skills project with students in the Fall of 2023. Since using the most sustainable and appropriate wood species is a high priority for this project, our team has put together an RFP for potential suppliers to help us identify and procure the right types of conservation timber options. The deadline to identify the wood for the ATU project is May 1, 2023. If you are interested please reach out to our team at galway@pilot-projects.org.

As always, we are thankful for your continued interest in our work and for sharing our mission to co-create a better world. Please drop us a line if you’d like to know more!

– Scott Francisco and the Pilot Projects team