Field Trip at ISFC Tokyo Meeting Held at Kitayama Company-Owned Forests
Nippon Paper Industries Co.,Ltd.
On March 26, we held a field trip for a regular meeting of the International Sustainable Forestry Coalition (forestry industryISFC) in Tokyo at the Kitayama Company-Owned Forests(Fujinomiya City, Shizuoka Prefecture, an area of about 680 hectares) at the foot of Mt. Fuji.
The vast forests owned and managed by the Company in Japan and abroad not only supply timber, but also have various public welfare functions such as disaster prevention,water source retention, biodiversity protection, and carbon storage. The forests are positioned as“Natural Capital”, which provide these ecosystem services, and as an example in Japan, we guided nearly 30forestry industryofficials from all over the world to our Kitayama Company-Owned Forests.
At the Kitayama Company-Owned Forests, sustainableforestry industrymanagement such as thinning, clear-cutting, andplantation was introduced, and lively discussions were held on the commonalities, differences, and issues of forest and forestry industry policies compared to other countries. In particular, there was great interest in the role of forests in disaster prevention andwater source retentionin Japan's steep catchment areas, and the differences in growth between elite trees test forests and existing seedlings, and the tour was successfully completed with favorable reviews from all participants.
Elite trees overview
The regular meeting preceded the field trip was accompanied by a technical meeting of the Forest Natural Capital Accounting Project, and discussions were held over two and a half days on how to quantify ecosystem services, focusing on 18 forestry industry companies that own and manage more than 24 million hectares of forests in 21 countries, including us. In the future, we will establish a system of“ Natural Capital Accounting for Forests” based on broad consensus, which will lead to“Nature Positive”by forest.
Interest was also drawn to the beautiful underground water that had been filtered over decades at Mt. Fuji (Location: Mt. Fuji Hongu Sengen Taisha Shrine)
For more information about the project, as well as the participating companies and organizations, as well as mid-term reports on the results of the first half of the year, please refer to the ISFC Project Report.