Sustainability reporting guide is available

The guide is part of the project “Finance and Sustainability”, which Norwegian Wood Cluster is currently conducting. The project “Finance and Sustainability” is part of the comprehensive Green Platform project “SirkTRE”, which is supported by Innovation Norway, the Research Council of Norway and SIVA. Read more about “SirkTRE” here: www.sirktre.no

The main objective of the project “Finance and sustainability” is to create increased insight into ongoing work within finance and sustainability with relevance to the forest and wood industry, both to meet documentation requirements and to exploit opportunities. This applies in particular to the consequences of the EU taxonomy. The need for sustainability reporting is central. Reuse, material recovery and recycling are among the many topics the company must consider when preparing its own sustainability report.

Structure of the guide

The guide is divided into five parts.

Part 1 provides an overview of the regulations you need to comply with and gives advice on how to get started with sustainability reporting. This part has been prepared by Karoline Kjos-Nordli, Glommen Mjøsen Skog, on behalf of Norwegian Wood Cluster. She has also prepared Part 2, with suggestions for reporting areas for the forest and wood industry, as well as Part 3, with an overview of requirements for sustainability-related information.

– “We would like to give special thanks to Karoline Kjos-Nordli for her efforts. She has made a significant contribution to the development of the guide and managed to make a complicated subject both clear and accessible,” says cluster manager Berit Sanness, Norwegian Wood Cluster.

In order to simplify the work of companies in the forest and wood industry, Norwegian Wood Cluster has received assistance from NIBIO to compile relevant parameters for the forest and wood industry in Part 4.

– The assignment was carried out by Aksel Granhus with assistance from Simen Gjølsjø and Rune Eriksen at NIBIO, and we thank them for their valuable help in gaining access to relevant data on forest resources, harvesting methods, forest biodiversity, tree species and productive capacity, regeneration and forest management, and energy,” says Sanness.

As a result of the “Finance and sustainability” project, the cooperative area has been added as a separate stratification variable in NIBIO’s freely available web application where users can download compilations of data from the National Forest Census.

– “We expect this to be useful for the forest owner cooperatives. The solution has been developed as part of the project, but this will also be a variable in the future,” says Sanness. She explains that transport was also a desired topic in the guide.

– We are therefore grateful to Dag Skjølaas of the Norwegian Forest Owners’ Association for ensuring that this topic is also covered. The topic is summarized in Part 5,” says Sanness.

Useful process

In order to best meet the needs of the forest and timber industry, the “Finance and Sustainability” project has conducted two workshops and three course days on the topic of sustainability reporting. The workshop on June 22, 2022 identified a number of parameters that were followed up in the work on Part 4 and Part 5, while draft content in Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 was presented and discussed at the workshop on November 16, 2023.

– The great willingness to share among the companies during the project has been encouraging. The input in workshops and meetings has been very useful. So has the input from the project team. We thank everyone for their valuable contributions. A special thanks goes to Sustainability Director Rune F. Andersen, Moelven Industrier, for being an important contributor both in the meetings and as a sparring partner during the development of the guide,” says Sanness.