EPN 2015 Spring Meeting Bellingham, Washington

Early this month, Dogwood Alliance was proud to attend the Environmental Paper Network’s 2015 Spring Steering Committee meeting in Bellingham, Washington. The rainy Northwest gave us a day of rain but two gloriously clear spring days with views of bald eagles, seals, snowcapped mountains and even Canada.

Environmental Paper Network (EPN) began in 2002 as an unlikely alliance of organizations with very diverse approaches to a common problem.

EPN addresses the scale of the challenges and opportunities for social justice and conservation presented by the expanding forest, pulp and paper industry.

Once gain it was a pleasure to be among committed activists working to advance a common vision to transform the pulp and paper industry into a more environmentally and socially responsible force across the planet. Indeed Dogwood Alliance was one of the founding partners of the EPN, co-sponsoring the Environmental Paper Summit in California in 2002 along with many important allies. This group eventually coalesced in North America as the Environmental Paper Network, aligned around a Common Vision for transforming the pulp and paper industry.

EPN continues to be a critical voice for the movement to green the forest products industry and for Dogwood Alliance.

Beyond EPN’s compelling updated Global Vision and its excellent suite of tools for greening paper procurement, Dogwood also relies on our colleagues in the EPN for strategic and tactical advice, movement updates and insight into future issues and opportunities to leverage positive change. Updates at this meeting focused on higher level discussion around evolving issues in Indonesia, including EPN’s recent Risk Assessment, the Canadian Boreal and Dogwood’s home the Southern US. In addition, we discussed next steps in organizing the global Environmental Paper Network, including groups from Europe, China and from around the world into a more cohesive and effective structure. This is particularly compelling work as forest products and paper markets are truly global and these important civil society groups from around the world deserve to engage with this community at the highest level. We can look forward to new EPN tools, including a revised model environmental paper policy and improvements in the workings of the Paper Calculator.

Thanks go out to my colleagues at the EPN community for their ongoing support and comradery.

Dogwood Alliance stands with every single one of you in support of the Global Paper Vision.

Our work continues, and it is always great when you can work with such a good group of people.