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Hello from Pilot Projects,
We're extending warm spring greetings from Montréal. Part of our team had the pleasure of participating in the Sommet Climate Montréal where we connected with local partners and collaborators, including some who are new to our newsletter. Welcome et bienvenue if this is you! This quarterly newsletter is where we share the latest updates from our programs and milestones.
FOREST CONSERVATION EASEMENTS IN SOUTHERN ONTARIO
We love working with forest owners and communities! Many of you know us through our work in tropical forests, but rest assured, we’re committed to Canadian forests too! We are excited to announce this pilot project, developed in partnership with Ducks Unlimited Canada, supporting local landowners in Eastern Ontario, Canada to establish permanent conservation easements. The primary objective is to help landowners protect forests for future generations while also managing them for carbon storage, biodiversity and timber production when appropriate.
If you are a landowner in Southern Ontario or know of landowners who might make good candidates, we would appreciate it if you could connect us to them.
Please feel free to forward this to anyone within your network who may be interested. We are currently collecting applications and expressions of interest until May 31.
YOUTH, FORESTS AND FUTURES
As a continuation of our Future of Forest Work and Communities project, begun in 2016, our partners at University of Saskatchewan are planning a Latin American Youth Summit in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia for 2025. The summit aims to bring together 25 youth from Latin American countries with significant forests to focus on dialogue, knowledge exchange, and empowerment of the next generation of conservation leaders.
We are actively seeking Youth Nominations and financial sponsorship from organizations who support youth development, forest conservation or both!
Please contact us if you are able to nominate an individual, help fund this initiative or offer a letter of support. Support letters need to be received no later than June 17, a few short weeks from now.
FROM GALWAY TO GUATEMALA!
Award-winning Irish woodworking students from our Partner Forest Program are packing their jungle trekking gear and will be travelling to one of our favorite community managed tropical forests! As part of Galway County’s Partner Forest program, advanced design and woodworking students put world-class design and craftsmanship to work and showed how Conservation Timber can serve Galway County and other urban areas of Ireland. This timber, sustainably sourced from a social forestry enterprise in the Amazonas state of Brazil, can meet stringent demands for people-centered public spaces and the municipality’s pace-setting sustainability goals.
The Atlantic Technological University students who excelled in the 2024 Connecting Communities Design Competition were awarded a week-long expedition led by community representatives to Uaxactún, Guatemala at the end of May to learn more about sustainable tropical forestry. Students and professors will visit two landmark tropical community forest concessions, exchange knowledge, co-create new furniture pieces with the community, and learn hands-on about the conservation timber value chain. We are looking forward to reporting more in our next newsletter, and wish the group safe travels!
CONSERVATION TIMBER FORUM AT THE CARREFOUR INTERNATIONAL DU BOIS
Welcome to one of the most important wood conferences in France, or should we say, le monde! At CIB Pilot Projects is hosting a gathering of global practitioners and innovators on the future of wood as a conservation tool on Thursday, May 30 from 2 p.m. - 5 p.m. The goal of this complementary forum is a deeper understanding of Conservation Timber's potential in meeting the challenges of deforestation and the requirements of all stakeholders in the value system.
JOIN US AT URBAN FUTURES ROTTERDAM 24
Partner Forest Leaders in Rotterdam
In search of urban innovators!
Engage with current and future Partner Forest program leaders who are going to the next level of conservation. Hosted during the Urban Futures 24 conference in Rotterdam, this meet, greet and discussion event on June 6 will reflect on the experiences of the Partner Forest program over the past four years and how these pilot projects are beginning to scale. Conference passes are required.
Conservation Timber Infrastructure Tour
Explore Rotterdam's Infrastructure
Just what exactly is Conservation Timber, and how can it be used in civic infrastructure?
Starting with Rotterdam’s innovative Beterbanks, this tour on June 7 will demonstrate and investigate the potential of forest-positive procurement to connect urban residents to sustainably managed forests worldwide.
MASS TIMBER TIPPING POINT
Workshops are well underway in collaboration with Architecture 2030 and select architecture, engineering and construction firms. The project began in mid 2023 with a survey gauging selected firms' experiences, perceptions, and sustainability views and yielded insightful results.
The collaboration in these workshops and surveys is instrumental to unlocking the potential of low-carbon timber building systems. We are looking forward to collaboratively driving innovation and investment in the American forestry value chain and wanted to express our thanks to the invaluable contributions from participating firms that we have received to date, and in the workshops and follow-ups to come in this important endeavor.
UPCOMING EVENTS/CONFERENCES
Carrefour International du Bois - We will be in Nantes!
Meet with us at the ATIBT Booth on Wednesday and Friday
Join us for the Conservation Timber Forum on Thursday
Urban Future - We will be in Rotterdam!
One of the presenters at Session 2.2. on Day 1, June 6
Meet us for the Rotterdam Infrastructure Tour on June 8
IUFRO World Congress 2024 - We will be in Stockholm!
Presenting Sustainable Wood for Cities on June 25
Presenting Co-creating the Future of Forest Work: A multidisciplinary methodology for the Youth Visioning Workshop on June 27
IN THE MEDIA: PILOT PROJECTS AND OUR COLLABORATORS
Humans forgot how to built from timber, but now we know the practice could help us hit climate targets, it's time to relearn... and scale up!
To meet the global goals, urban construction must shift from concrete and steel structures to lower-carbon bio-based materials
De gemeente Rotterdam is op 27 maart gestart met het plaatsen van 50 bankjes met 6 soorten tropisch hout, verspreid over de stad.
TEAM UPDATE
We are excited to announce our new members of the Pilot Project Team! Milla, Ajwad and Sarah recently joined our office in Montreal and are quickly learning about all of the programs and initiatives that we lead and support. We’ve also updated all of our team photos!
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