Can Business Conserve Forests and Our Future?
- Date: 24 June 2025
In this episode of Nature Breaking, host Seth Larson sits down with Linda Walker, WWF’s senior director of corporate engagement for forests, to explore the urgent threats to global forests and the role of business in helping reverse current trends.
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Last month, alarming new data were released showing record-breaking tropical forest loss in 2024—an 80% increase over the previous year. Forests are critical to our planet and to us as humans, so we need to double down on efforts to stop the loss of forests where possible and more responsibly manage forests that are earmarked for production. Businesses have a big role to play because 54% of the world’s forests are managed either wholly or partly for the production of things like timber, pulp and paper, and furniture. This interview dives into how some companies are already making a difference, including by participating in Forests Forward—WWF’s flagship program for corporate leadership on forests launched in 2021. Linda and Seth also discuss what a new report, the Forests Forward Impact Report, reveals about the program’s progress and the challenges ahead.
Tune in to hear inspiring stories from the field, insights into responsible forest management, and how everyday actions—by companies and consumers—can help keep forests thriving.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Seth Larson: Welcome to Nature Breaking a World Wildlife Fund podcast, focused on the news and trends affecting our natural world and the people and species who call it home. I'm Seth Larson, and last month alarming new data were released showing record breaking tropical forest loss in 2024.
Forests are critical to our planet and to us as humans, so we really need to double down on efforts to stop the loss of forests where possible and to more sustainably managed forests that are earmarked for production. That last part matters because 54% of the world's forests are managed either wholly or partly for the production of things like timber, pulp and paper, and furniture. That means that the companies that sell those products as well as companies that source agricultural commodities like palm oil, soy, and beef, they have a big influence on whether forests get managed sustainably and continue to provide important ecosystem functions or get plundered unsustainably at great cost to people and wildlife.
That's where WWF's Forests Forward program comes in. This program was launched in 2021 to engage companies around the globe to reduce their impact on forests from the sourcing of commodities and to support nature-based solutions like forest restoration. WWF just released a new report chronicling the Forests Forward program's impact across its first four years, so I wanted to take this moment to dive a little deeper into what it looks like for a company to be a force for good in the world of forest conservation. Joining me for today's conversation is Linda Walker, WWF's Senior Director for Corporate Engagement on Forests.
Linda will share some insights from the first four years of the Forests Forward Program, as well as what she hopes it will achieve in the years to come. Thank you for listening, and now here's my conversation with Linda.
Hey, Linda Walker, welcome to Nature Breaking. It's awesome to have you here today.
Linda Walker: Thanks so much, Seth. It's great to be here.
Seth Larson: Yeah, this is gonna be a fun conversation and I wanna start by just getting to know you a little better. You and I have worked together a little bit, but I wanna hear you talk about what inspired your love for forests to begin with, and to get a little more specific, I'd love to ask you to share what your favorite forest related memory is either from your personal life or from your professional life.
Linda Walker: Sure. I grew up in Southern New Jersey, not a place exactly known for its majestic old growth forest.
Seth Larson: The pine barrens though....
Linda Walker: Yes. Very near the pine barrens. Beautiful area.
But we had 40 acres of woods behind the house I grew up in. Wow. That was majestic to me. Imagine a 10-year-old girl just following her dad into those woods to find this 30-inch diameter tulip poplar tree, we would try to get our arms around it. I would look up into the sky. It felt like the, they have flowers, so it looked like the flowers and the branches were touching the sky.
And my sister and cousin and I spent endless hours roaming around back there, just pretending we were in other worlds. And I think, before I even knew the words, I gained an appreciation of that forest. Yeah. And the forest's ability to provide, calm and rejuvenation. And that really inspired me to visit other forests, get a master's degree in forestry, and have a career in forest conservation.
Seth Larson: Yeah. Yeah, that sounds amazing.
Linda Walker: Yeah. And in terms of my coolest forest memory, please. That would have to be seeing my first orangutan in the wild. It was about 15 years ago on the Indonesian Island of Borneo.
Seth Larson: Yep.
Linda Walker: We had a WWF Forest team meeting where colleagues around the world were coming together to build on our strategy for working with companies the way we do.
And we also had some of our forest corporate partners with us, and we were able to show them some really beautiful tropical forests and some really impacted areas that had been affected by, by deforestation. So after the meeting, a few of us, booked a trip up a remote river. We're going up this river and look off to the left and catch a glimpse of an enormous kind of truck tire sized stick nest.
Which is a nest that orangutans build every night. They build a different nest to sleep in. So we caught a glimpse of that and got really excited, and a few minutes later we see this orangutan like swinging through the forest canopy and a proboscis monkey, as a bonus. So it was really exciting.
It was one of the most magical moments of my life and you really get a sense that. Those animals, those orangutans are one of our closest living relatives.
Seth Larson: Yeah, when you saw the tire-sized nest, did you pause and just figure, okay, we're gonna wait here and see if an orangutan comes through?
Linda Walker: Yeah, we were going pretty slow. We were going up river in a small motorboat. Yeah. So we were just like staying at the same place. And yeah, it was really cool. And there's, there's not that many orangutans left in the wild. They are really affected by deforestation in, in that part of the world, but seeing one was magical, and WWF is doing amazing work and other organizations to protect them. Yeah. Yeah, it really inspired me and I've been back a few times, so that's my, special place.
So Linda, I wanna dive more into the conservation work and some of the stuff that we're really here to talk about today.
Seth Larson: Yeah, and I wanted to start out by just asking you to parse out a statistic that I referenced in my intro to this episode. And this is something I came across when researching for this episode and going through the Forests Forward Impact Report. And the statistic said that 54% of the world's forests are managed either wholly or partly for production.
And I wanted to ask you to just talk more about what that number means. Yeah. And how it shapes WWF's approach to forest conservation.
Linda Walker: Sure, that number is really why we have this Forests Forward program that I'll talk more about. So that number is critically important. Maybe before we go there, I just wanted to highlight a number that you mentioned in your introduction, which is the alarming rate of deforestation that has also, increased in the past year.
We are losing forests at a rate of almost 18 soccer fields per minute. Think about that, that is an enormous amount of forests. So we have to do everything we can to halt and reverse that forest loss. And WWF's working very hard on that. But at the same time, we have to better manage the forests that we have and that's what our Forests Forward program is about.
Broadly speaking, forests around the world can be divided in a bunch of different categories. For example, there are protected forests like legally protected forests like in national parks, right? They're really off limits from timber harvest. There are forests, fortunately in very remote parts of the world, still in the tropics or in boreal areas. Those are critically important to protect. And there are a lot of forests around the world that just don't have any management on them. They're just out there. But the 54% that you mentioned is the forest area that has some type of management plan. Yeah. On it, for and that includes timber harvesting.
Seth Larson: I was just so surprised that it was actually a majority of forests that are standing because you think of a national park or a protected area, it's such a vast swath of forest, that in my mind, that just had to make up the majority of the world's forest between all of 'em.
Linda Walker: Unfortunately it doesn't because they, a lot of those parks still are a patch within a larger region that can include a lot of areas that have been deforested or converted to agricultural uses or other things.
So the, but the important thing to know is when you think about these managed forests and timber harvest on them, that can range from very low intensity timber harvest, which is really what's happening on a lot of, like family forest ownerships in the United States. And also community and indigenous-managed forest also tend to have relatively lower timber harvest. They do harvest for timber, but also, those communities are dependent on those forests for their food and their medicines and their livelihoods. So you can range from this sort of low intensity timber harvesting to very high intensity industrial forest and plantation forestry and those forests, which we have in the US and, many other parts of the world, those are really the engine that drives the trillion dollars in global forest products trade every year.
Seth Larson: Yeah.
Linda Walker: But the important thing for our audience to know is that all that 54% of managed forests around the world have a critical role to play in forest conservation and in our planet's health. Because if those forests are well managed, they can provide critical habitat for wildlife, they can store enormous amounts of carbon, they can continue filtering our air and water and continue to produce on a renewable basis all this forest products we use every day.
But if they're not responsibly managed, if those forests are subject to illegal logging or repeated over harvesting, they can get degraded and they can become really vulnerable to things like insect pests and diseases and invasive species and forest fires and yeah, forest conversion ultimately. And that can happen when you, if you over harvest an area, it can lose the structural diversity that allow like different, different levels for animals to live in, it can lose a species diversity. And so those areas really aren't, they're not delivering the services that we need forest to provide. So the reason that Forests Forward and our work with companies exist, in this area, is we know if we can engage forest managers to better manage their forests and engage companies that source forest products or other products that can relate to forests, then we can help keep those forests healthy and deliver on our conservation goals and ultimately keep ourselves healthy.
Seth Larson: Yeah. That's a great transition to talking about the Forests Forward program specifically. Yeah. And I'd love to ask you to just talk about the history of the program, it's four years old now. Yeah. And I'd love to hear you talk about what the impetus behind starting this program was and what it was designed to achieve.
Linda Walker: Sure. Forests Forward really builds on WWF's 30 years of working with forest managers and companies on responsible forestry. I'd say one of the original, one original impetus was just the recognition that these managed forests are part of the mosaic of land uses that exist. Yeah. In our priority forest areas around the world.
And there was a real need for a more structured approach to engage with those forest managers to make the business case for improved forest management, to keep those places healthy for the species we're interested in protecting. So that was one impetus. Another impetus was really going down the other end of the supply chain and at that time, a few decades ago, big retailers like in the US and Europe were being increasingly asked by their ecologically minded consumers for better proof that the products on their store shelves were not contributing to tropical deforestation.
Seth Larson: Yeah.
Linda Walker: So back in 1994, WWF and a few other organizations founded a group called the Forest Stewardship Council or FSC.
I actually brought one of their flyers to show you today.
Seth Larson: Yeah.
Linda Walker: So FSC developed the highest standards for forest management that protects environmental and social issues related to forestry. Things like protecting old growth forests, protecting rare species as you manage forests, wider stream buffers, protecting wetlands, reducing herbicide use, not cutting trees on steep slopes. Those are all the more of the environmental issues and requirements that were higher than the legal requirement for those forests. Similar... similar robust requirements around social issues, workers' rights, safety, consideration of indigenous peoples that might live in the area. So for a long time, WWF was really focused on promoting the adoption of FSC with forest managers and companies that source forest products because products that come from those forests can carry that FSC logo.
Seth Larson: And as you said, these are voluntary standards. Exactly. They're not legally enforced. But, for a company to be able to put that FSC logo on the product they're selling, they have to abide by all these standards.
Linda Walker: They have to abide by that, get independently certified by an independent third party and then, they can carry the FSC logo on their products. So fast forward though to 2021 when we launched the Forests Forward program. We were really trying to build on that 30 years of work that we were doing with companies, and adapt the program in ways that we thought could have even more impact and engage even more companies. So we did three different things.
The first thing we did is building on FSC. We developed a broader set of tools and trainings, field tours, modules, supplier questionnaires, that could be even more resources that we could offer to forest managers and companies to help them with management and responsible sourcing. The second thing we did is decide to incorporate a broader set of commodities that can be affecting forests. Like some of the agricultural commodities that come from deforestation like palm oil or leather from ag, from, from beef, natural rubber. So we broadened beyond forest products, wood and paper products, to some of those other commodities and engaging the companies that source those like apparel companies, restaurant companies, technology companies.
That was the second way we broadened and expanded. And the third thing that we did with Forests Forward is we added a new component of the program around nature-based solutions. So companies that we work with on the buyer side of forest products are required to make an additional investment beyond their responsible sourcing efforts in nature-based solutions, which can include funding restoration in priority landscapes, funding improved training for rangers on protected forests, supporting community forests or agroforestry projects, and we are implementing that third pillar of the program in coordination with our sister program called the Nature-Based Solutions Origination Platform. That was launched, more recently. And that program really, really hones in on specific interventions in different landscapes that we think will be particularly of interest to some of our corporate partners who have an interest in quantifying the carbon, the nature, and the people benefits of the investments that they're supporting so that can help them deliver against their sustainability goals, climate goals, nature goals that they might have. So we just try to find that sweet spot between our priority work and what we think the companies might be interested in supporting.
Seth Larson: Yeah, it seems like such a great and natural but necessary evolution in the work that you, as you said, we've been doing at WWF with companies for many years, but really taking it to the next level and thinking more thoroughly about how we can drive a bigger impact.
Linda Walker: Exactly, given the rates of forest loss and the urgency, we wanna affect as many sectors as we can and really try to shift global markets on a wide range of sectors to be more sustainable and more resilient.
Seth Larson: And so what's the response been like from companies, as you're having conversations, I'm sure that you're sometimes having to convince companies to participate in this program. What's the response been like and what's the business case that you're making to these companies to help convince them to take part?
Linda Walker: Yeah, companies like it. We are fortunate, we're fortunate. We have a great set of companies, but we're always want more. Of course, we wanna influence more and go faster. We have 26 companies that range across nine sectors all across the world, from the forest floor to the sales floor that we're working with. We have forest managers that, that own or manage forest concessions in places like the Congo Basin and the Amazon. And we have some of the world's largest global retailers, manufacturers, and end users of forest products as well. Some companies that might be familiar to listeners here in the US include HP, Costco, Williams Sonoma. We've got Pepsi, International Paper, Nike. Wow. Kimberly Clark, Proctor and Gamble, and Lowe's. That's just to name a few. In terms of the business case, I think we try to engage companies on the business case for taking action and also on the business case for working with WWF.
So on the business case for action, we're fortunate in some ways that there's been a lot of studies and information out in the media about the connection between companies and nature. The World Economic Forum a couple years ago put out a report that estimated that nearly half of the world's GDP is dependent on nature or nature services in some way.
That's $44 trillion a year. Amazing. So nature loss has direct implications for companies bottom line, especially companies that depend on forest or forest products.
Seth Larson: Yeah.
Linda Walker: So that case is being made because companies can see some of the financial impacts of nature loss of if they need to pause operations when there's been an extreme weather event, or if because of extreme weather, heat waves or droughts, that can really affect operations. So I think the case is being made for us in some ways because of the way climate change is affecting forests. But I'll also say that companies are recognizing more and more that forests are one of our best solutions for climate change. Actions like improved forest management, forest protection, and restoration can deliver 30% of the climate mitigation that we need to keep global temperatures below 1.5 degrees.
Seth Larson: That's a big number. It's 30%.
Linda Walker: It's a big number; it's a critical number.
Of course, companies need to reduce their fossil fuel use. That's first and foremost. But forests and agricultural, a lot of grasslands and other actions you can take for nature can and must play a critical role in that solution. And just, the other couple things that really help make the business case, there's an increased regulatory environment right now, especially in the EU.
Yeah, there's a regulation called the EU Deforestation Regulation that's really forcing companies who sell into that market to prove that their products are deforestation free. So there's that sort of regulatory pressure that companies are facing as well as increasing investor and consumer pressure in the US.
So the, all those things are helping make the business case. And then in terms of the business case for working with WWF, I think companies really appreciate WWF's global reach. We're in a lot of the same places that these companies are with their sourcing or operations. They appreciate our pragmatic kind of science-based approach.
We meet companies where they are. We're challenging them all the time to go further and faster, but we help companies really understand how forest risk can translate to business risk and how they can take action to mitigate it by engaging with suppliers, by implementing stronger sourcing policies, by investing in these nature-based solutions, and by... and companies really appreciate the chance to have WWF amplify the transparent reporting on progress that they might be doing as well.
Seth Larson: Yeah. So it's been four years, right? Yeah. 2021. We're in 2025 now. Yeah. Four years was a moment when you all decided to take stock and put a report together about what the program has achieved so far. It’s called the Forests Forward Impact Report, right?
Linda Walker: That's right. Yep.
Seth Larson: And it will, it'll, we're recording it now just a week or two before that report's coming out. But by the time people hear this episode, that report will be available. So I wanted to ask you to talk a little about what impacts that report chronicles and basically what has the program achieved over the last four years?
Linda Walker: Yeah, we hope everybody reads the report, of course, but we're really excited about it because it does really reflect an enormous amount of collaboration and engagement and impact. I guess the top line statistic is that between the forests that are managed by partners in our program and the landscape or forest investments that are being made by companies in the program that's totaling four, almost 4 million hectares of forest area around the world that's been impacted by those actions by our companies. And just to break that down, about 2.7 million hectares of those forests are managed by companies that are forest managers and about 1.3 million are represented by the things like restoration that our downstream buyers are funding. But in addition to that number, which is significant, the volume of wood that is, is purchased by these companies I mentioned and others who are sourcing responsibly from forests, is translating into better management of those forests.
Seth Larson: Just to go back to that 4 million hectares number, can you put that in perspective in relation to the size of a state or something that people might be able to relate to?
Linda Walker: Yeah. I know, we talk hectares more, acres more than hectares. Sure. In the US so a hectare is about 2.2 acres, and I think that 4 million hectares is about a couple New Jerseys...
Seth Larson: A couple New Jerseys.
Linda Walker: Where I grew up. So it's, it's a significant area and our aspiration and what we're seeing already is a lot of those investments are allowing us to attract other public sector and foundation or other private sector finance to those same places. So some of these investments are kinda like anchor investments that allow us to bring, to leverage those and bring more money in as well.
Seth Larson: Great. Yeah. And so I know the report also really dives into some specific case studies and examples of companies that have engaged and made a difference in certain ways. I'd love for you to share some of those concrete examples to give people a picture in their minds of how this program really works and engages with companies and what those projects look like on the ground.
Linda Walker: One example I can share is our partnership with HP. Going back to, as I said, pre-2021, when we launched Forests Forward, we had been working with HP for more than a decade to help them develop an industry leading responsible sourcing policy for HP branded papers and paper-based packaging. And HP did a great job with implementing that, that policy, engaging with suppliers and avoiding deforestation. And then in 2020 we, we agreed to dramatically expand that partnership to really focus on these nature-based solutions. So now with the support of HP, we, WWF and partners have been able to affect more than 500,000 acres, that's an acres number, across the world, including in China, Peru, Brazil, and Australia. For example, in the upper reaches of the Amazon in an area called Madre de Dios, Peru, we are working with forest management concessions. We're also working with some agroforestry cooperatives that produce Brazil nuts to help them.
Seth Larson: Agroforestry cooperatives.
Linda Walker: Yeah. Yeah. These cooperatives of different communities that come together and kind of pool their resources to manage forest, but also some agricultural products within it. That's kind of... agroforestry is where you're inter planting agricultural products within, within a forest system.
Seth Larson: Ah, I, okay.
Linda Walker: Which can really be a positive thing for community livelihoods and income while you still have, a larger forest area. So that work is happening. We're also working to, to train women in the forestry profession who have an interest in it. It's more of a male dominated field, obviously, even in that part of the world. Yeah. But there's some real interest in, in the communities, in, in getting women more trained up in some of those skills. So we're doing that. Also in Brazil, if you go over the eastern side of Brazil, we're working with HP funding in the Atlantic Forest area. Now the Atlantic Forest is not as well-known as the Amazon. But it is an, it is an equally biodiverse and endangered tropical forest in that part of the world. Only 12% of it is left, but it's critically important for species like the jaguar. And so with HP support we've been able to, to implement restoration in a lot of areas that are reconnecting fragmented jaguar habitat, working with some indigenous communities, to be able to access their traditional lands, more in areas that have been designated as park land.
And again, working with local communities to just, improve some of their livelihood and some of the agroforestry projects that they're implementing too. And last but not least, we are implementing restoration, in areas in Eastern Australia that were hit by wildfires.
Seth Larson: Oh, sure. Yeah.
Linda Walker: To the benefit of koalas, so HP's also helping us in that area. Oh, that's great. So that's a, an example on more of the buyer side companies that we work with. On the forest management side, there's a company called Interholco that manages a large forest concession in the Congo Basin. Now that is a difficult part of the world to operate in, for a variety of reasons.
But Interholco is implementing its FSC certification and reduced impact logging and all the other principles of FSC. As such that, the forest is managed with elephants and gorillas and chimpanzees still living and roaming free and healthy in that forest. So that's an example of it can be well managed and still, really provide a lot of those benefits. But there's obviously a lot of local communities that live, live around those forests too. So we're working together with Interholco find more ways to bring more revenue to those communities that are living around that area to even employ some of the community members for anti-poaching patrols and things like that to protect the forest. So, really looking for ways to keep reinforcing the value of keeping those forests standing and well managed and bringing real economic value to the communities yeah, that surround it.
Seth Larson: That, that sounds like such a great example that I hope other forest management companies learn from. Yeah. And I'm just trying to think about the reasons a company might be resistant to engaging in those practices. And my guess is it's just, it's a different way of approaching that business and it might take a little bit of work on the front end to adjust practices and make sure that you're taking into account different things.
It reminds me of something that our colleague Pete Pearson said on a, an episode of a few weeks ago when I interview, interviewed him about our food waste work. And he was talking about working with hotels and some other companies to avoid food waste and their food supply services. And he, I think he talked about how doing anything is gonna be a little bit of work on the front end. But once we see companies do that work, they tend not to backslide because they don't wanna lose the progress and they actually see the benefits that come from it and I'm wondering if you expect or have already seen the same sort of response from Interholco or the other companies that are, yeah, implementing those more positive approaches.
Linda Walker: Yeah, absolutely, Seth. I think they see, they see the value of the community collaboration and trust, and the benefits that have come to the community, that sort of social license to operate. Yeah. It's been critical for them to operate in that really difficult part of the world. They also are motivated to keep up those practices because the buyers of the wood that they're harvesting when they do harvest in that forest are very, discriminating buyers. Their market is for higher end, sustainably sourced tropical woods. And, but if you don't have that market demand, then you don't have as much motivation to keep, that can really erode the motivation to keep implementing those practices for downstream. But that's what we're trying so hard is to keep that market demand up so you can keep the pressure on and the incentives on both on the upstream and downstream side.
Seth Larson: Forests Forward is just one initiative in a constellation of forest conservation programs, initiatives around the world, from NGOs, from governments, and those are all happening against a backdrop of really profound global loss of forests, like we talked about earlier in this episode. Yep. And in that context, I just wanted to ask if you feel hopeful that between all these different initiatives coming together, if there is a future where that trend of forest loss gets reversed and we can see that stop.
Linda Walker: Yeah. Yeah. As you said at the beginning, and we've said throughout, forests are at risk. We're in a dire situation now. But so it's an all-hands-on deck approach. But I am hopeful because as you said we need, we need governments, we need companies, we need communities, we need civil society, everybody coming together. And so there are a couple things that give me hope, in, in that vein. One is there is an increasing, increasingly large pool of money that's being committed by governments and companies toward investing in these nature-based solutions for climate mitigation. One latest study I saw said $200 billion, $200 billion has been committed, mostly by governments but also by companies. Wow. That can be utilized to essentially reward, particularly tropical forest countries for keeping forests standing in those countries.
One example of that is called the tropical forest finance facility, the TFFF. That's being built out in the lead out and the lead up to this year's climate COP. And that would be, countries more developed countries pooling money and offering money to lesser developed countries that have these huge tropical forest areas to basically reward them to keep their forest as forest. You have to make forests more valuable standing than cutting them down for something else.
Seth Larson: Yeah.
Linda Walker: So we need more like 500 billion committed by 2030, but that's still a pretty impressive number and it's going up. So I feel some optimism about that because there is more and more momentum. The upcoming COP is being called the Forest COP, so we're hopeful.
Seth Larson: Being held in Brazil.
Linda Walker: Being held in Brazil.
Yeah. So really hopeful that's, that momentum will continue 'cause of the recognition of the financial costs associated with forest loss, that will affect us all. The other thing that gives me hope is I think there's just more and more recognition of the interconnectedness of our human health, with forest health and planetary health.
Seth Larson: Yeah.
Linda Walker: There've been more and more studies that show the mental health benefits and physical health benefits of spending time in forests and more and more studies, including some that WWF has been involved with showing the connection between deforestation and the spread of infectious disease in tropical regions.
The more we can show the, the connection between our human health and planetary health and forest health. I think that will create innovation and motivation to keep forest standing. So I'm hopeful on that front as well.
Seth Larson: Yeah. Linda, I just have one last question for you today before I let you go. And just thinking about people who might be listening to this show at home, on their commutes. Yeah. Watching on YouTube. What can they do to support forest conservation in their own lives and ensure that companies continue to prioritize the health of forests?
Linda Walker: Yeah. Act, act, act. I, I think everybody's familiar with a reduce, reuse, recycle mantra, which, I think we learned even when we were little at home. But that's a really, that's a really important one. At home, try to use forest resources efficiently. Use recycled paper where you can. Reclaim furniture, things like that. And when you do need to go out and buy a forest product, look for that FSC logo. Look for that checkmark tree symbol because that is your assurance that you're supporting responsible forestry when you're buying that product.
I think listeners could ideally take time to understand a little bit more what's behind that logo. It's not just a few things done better. Yeah. It's, there's people behind it. There is real differences in, on the ground that translate to better livelihoods and better habitat and things like that. If you go to a store, ask people, do you have a responsible sourcing policy? Do you have any FSC certified products? Do things like that. At school or work you can ask your employer or school, do you guys have a responsible sourcing policy? How do you decide what paper and supplies you buy for the school or for our offices or furniture? Everybody can be part of asking the questions that can, maybe have a light bulb go off. 'Cause they might not have been answered before.
And then last but not least, I would just say in your community, just get out and enjoy forests. Where there's so many opportunities to plant trees, to be out in nature with your family. And I think the more people do that, to join organizations that focus on forests locally and nationally, to advocate for policies that help forests, 'cause there's a lot of them out there that, ways that we can help forests with policy and regulation too. So I think, all those different pieces are ways that people can help, but doing any action is critically important. And I guess I just lastly say that people have a lot of power with their purses. Their purchasing power is really significant and everybody can make a difference, in every part of their lives. We're all busy and we all can't spend all the time going deep in some of these things, but even one simple action can make a big difference for forests.
So I… Yeah, I'm really grateful for all the supporters that we have and the opportunity to really enjoy all the benefits that forests provide.
Seth Larson: Yeah. I think we can leave it there for today. Linda, thank you so much for breaking this all down for us today. I really enjoyed having you on the podcast and have a great day.
Linda Walker: Thanks so much for having me, Seth. I really appreciate it. You too.
Seth Larson: Thanks again to Linda for joining the show today. As she said a minute ago, forests are incredibly important, not just for planetary health, but for human health. And they also provide some of the most essential products that we all use in our everyday lives. But if the forests that provide those products aren't managed sustainably, it's gonna continue driving forest loss with all the knock-on effects that come with that for people and wildlife. Companies have a big role to play in achieving better outcomes for forests, and I encourage everyone to read the new Forests Forward Impact Report to learn more. It's filled with examples of great on the groundwork that Forests Forward partner companies are supporting in the US and Canada, as well as in the tropics.
The link to the report is in the show notes for this episode. You can also learn more at forestforward.panda.org. For now, thank you for listening and let's keep building a more sustainable future.