Page 21 - Georgia Forestry - Issue 2 - Spring 2022
P. 21
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Dave Tenny, president and CEO of NAFO, and Andres Villegas, president and CEO of the Georgia Forestry Association
we know it’s becoming more relevant? Because 160 countries all agreed that there’s going to be ESG standards that have been applied globally at some point and a standard set of approaches so that everybody is speaking the common [language].
How does this impact us? If I’m reporting on my sustainability metrics like I would on my accounting metrics, and I’m determining what those metrics ought to be, and those metrics have anything to do with the environment, and I’m a publicly traded company that’s sourcing my packaging or my products that come from the land, then I’m going to have environmental metrics that are going to impact how I’m reporting on the sustainability of what I’m producing. You see how that comes our way pretty fast. That’s why it matters. And it creates opportunities and risks.
The biggest “E” out there right now is climate. There are also E metrics on water and E metrics on biodiversity. And they’re being developed now. Now is the time to start figuring out what the leaps and bounds are.
Who in the government will ultimately be responsible for all this? The SEC will be responsible for the standardization of these metrics. And that creates a federal nexus that will impact all of us. So what do we do with that? First, we understand what this is all about. Step number two is understanding how that is going to intersect the government and the SEC. And then making sure that we’re communicating with the Securities and Exchange Commission the right way so that when those metrics come out, they’re saying the right things about us. So that’s our task.
ESRI-based—
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