Boreal Forest Victory, Kimberly-Clark Agrees to Sustainability

Canada's Boreal Forest is North America’s largest ancient forest and provides habitat for threatened wildlife such as woodland caribou, wolverine and over one billion migratory birds. The new agreement ensures that Kimberly-Clark, which makes Kleenex-brand products, will no longer be purchasing pulp from the three million hectare Kenogami and Ogoki Forests in northern Ontario unless strict ecological criteria are met. These two areas within key zones of intact forest have been at the center of Greenpeace’s Kleercut campaign. As part of the agreement, Greenpeace announced that its nearly five-year-long Kleercut campaign against Kimberly-Clark is ended. 

Protection of the Boreal Forest is crucial to world efforts to stop climate change. This forest is the largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon on the planet, storing 27 years worth of greenhouse gas emissions or 186 billion tonnes. If this carbon is released into the atmosphere it will add to the threat of catastrophic climate change.  

Greenpeace’s second major forest success this year

  The agreement with Kimberly-Clark is the second major victory this year for Greenpeace’s forest campaign. At the end of March, Greenpeace celebrated an enormous success— the protection of the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia. It is the most comprehensive rainforest conservation plan in North America and protects an area nearly the size of Belgium. The success was the direct result of a decade-long campaign that thousands of Greenpeace supporters joined.