Partnering with WWF
Our goal at SIG is to create more thriving forests than it takes to make our products. Through our partnership with WWF Switzerland, we are supporting projects on the ground that improve the sustainability, biodiversity, and resilience of forests.
WWF
WWF is the world’s leading independent conservation organization, on a mission to create a world where people and wildlife can thrive together.
WWF has a long history of working to protect forests. Our partnership with WWF Switzerland will enable us to work together to deliver targeted support for at-risk forests in biodiversity hotspots and deforestation fronts.
Flagship project: Restoring forest landscapes in Mexico
Latin America is a deforestation hotspot. In the last 50 years, 94% of mammal, bird, fish, reptile, and amphibian populations have declined, and 40% of forests have been lost already — mainly due to land use change for agriculture and livestock. We must act now.
That’s why SIG and WWF Switzerland, together with local and national partners, are joining forces to protect and restore key forests in Mexico for people, climate, and biodiversity while creating enabling conditions to scale efforts nationwide.
The flagship project will focus on the Central Pacific Landscape which is home to some of Mexico’s richest nature. This landscape and its biodiversity are increasingly threatened by land use change and degradation linked to expansion of agricultural and livestock production.
The project will improve landscape management of 100,000 hectares, and an additional 750 hectares of degraded forest will be reforested and restored with native plants.
As well as providing funding, SIG will accompany project coordination, monitoring, and impact measuring to ensure that projects on the ground will deliver biodiversity improvements, positive social impacts, restoration of landscapes, and hectares of thriving forests.
Connecting forest ecosystems to save the jaguar
The Central Pacific Landscape acts as a superhighway connecting Mexico’s forest ecosystems – which is fundamental to the survival of highly mobile species such as the jaguar. Jaguars are essential to the forest ecosystems they inhabit but are increasingly threatened by rapid habitat destruction and their numbers are falling.
Saving the jaguar is key to saving the forest. Conserving them can create wider benefits including conserving and restoring the forest where they live, enhancing biodiversity, regulating the climate, and improving human wellbeing.
Through our flagship project with WWF Switzerland, we believe that by conserving jaguars we will help to secure vast territories in the Central Pacific Landscape that are at risk of being lost. These territories provide vital ecosystem services to local inhabitants. Therefore, protecting the jaguar can indirectly benefit human survival and livelihoods. By integrating wildlife-friendly productive practices with jaguar conservation, the project will also help ensure that humans and jaguars can coexist in harmony.
Engaging and strengthening local communities
The region where our flagship project is focused not only provides food and water for people while protecting them from hurricanes and tropical storms, but it is also home to different cultures and languages within the Mexican society.
We know local communities hold the key to unlock new and successful ways of development where nature is at the center of their decisions. SIG and WWF are working directly with local communities to restore and improve the landscape management of the forest.
Building on fruitful existing partnerships and successful previous work conducted by WWF, we will promote high quality forest landscape restoration interventions resulting in tangible benefits for local communities. The holistic interventions promote diverse land use and management practices across the entire landscape, engaging multiple stakeholders, including vulnerable groups in planning and decision-making regarding restoration and management activities.
WWF Forests Forward
SIG is a member of the WWF Forests Forward program, within which we have agreed on additional targets. Forests Forward is WWF’s performance-driven impact program. It focuses on mobilizing action to address global forest threats and ensure the world’s growing demand for wood can be met through sustainable forest management.
Forests Forward aims to demonstrate the full value of forests — not just for the wood they supply, but for all the benefits and ecosystem services they provide.
All photos © or used with permission of WWF.