WASHINGTON, Aug. 15, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI) praised Congress for passing the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which supplies funding for climate-smart forestry actions that promote forest well being and resilience and enhance carbon sequestration.
“The Act recognizes the important role of sustainably managed forests in advancing climate solutions,” mentioned Nadine Block, SFI Senior VP, Community and Government Relations. “The important investments included in the Inflation Reduction Act will benefit forest health on both private and public lands. It will help ensure our forests are resilient to wildfire and contribute to solving our climate crisis,” Block mentioned.
The invoice, which handed the Senate on August 7 and the House on August 12, contains quite a few provisions supposed to deal with local weather change. Key provisions for managing forests and pure sources on personal and state forestlands embrace:
- Forest conservation: $700 Million for the US Forest Service’s (USFS) Forest Legacy Program, which inspires the safety of privately owned forest lands via conservation easements or land purchases.
- Climate-smart forestry: $450 million to the USFS for offering forest-carbon grants to personal landowners.
- Conservation packages: $18 billion for “Climate-Smart Agriculture” through Natural Resources Conservation Service packages that always embrace tree and forest-related practices.
- Urban forests: $1.5 billion for grants to cities and non-profits through the USFS’s Urban and Community Forestry division, with a specific deal with benefitting underserved populations and areas.
- Wood merchandise analysis: $100 million for the Wood Innovation Grant Program of the USFS Research and Development division.
The invoice additionally would offer greater than $2 billion on to the USFS for work on National Forest System lands, together with for hazardous fuels discount initiatives inside wildland-urban interface zones and for vegetation administration initiatives carried out in accordance with the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003.
Many of these forest-related provisions will complement the work being carried out via the SFI® Forest Management Standard. The SFI Standard features a climate-smart forestry goal that has the potential to rework greatest practices throughout SFI’s 350-million-acre/140-million-hectare footprint to make our forests more practical in mitigating the impacts of local weather change. The climate-smart forestry goal requires SFI-certified organizations to establish and tackle local weather change dangers, develop adaptation goals and techniques to deal with these dangers, and establish and tackle mitigation alternatives in forest operations.
SFI participates in a number of coalitions which have despatched letters in help of the invoice, together with the Forest Climate Working Group and the Sustainable Urban Forest Coalition.
About the Sustainable Forestry Initiative
The Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI) advances sustainability via forest-focused collaborations. We are an unbiased, non-profit group that leverages 4 interconnected pillars of work: requirements, conservation, neighborhood, and training. SFI works with the forest sector, conservation teams, lecturers, researchers, model homeowners, useful resource professionals, landowners, educators, native communities, Indigenous Peoples, and governments. Collaborating with our community, we leverage SFI-certified forests and merchandise as highly effective instruments to assist clear up sustainability challenges reminiscent of local weather motion, conservation of biodiversity, training of future generations, and sustainable financial growth. Learn extra: forests.org
Media Contact
Nadine Block
Senior VP, Community and Government Relations
Sustainable Forestry Initiative
202-596-3456
[email protected]
