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Campaign Highlights the Virtues and Benefits of Wood

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The Futuro Madera network, made up of guilds and associations such as CORMA, Achbiom, Aprobosque, Acoforag, and Pymemad, unveiled the SOMOS MADERA campaign, which aims to foster a new perspective on the forestry sector.

SOMOS MADERA is the name of the campaign featured in various national media outlets, seeking to position and highlight the world of wood with its main attributes, including being a material present in the lives of millions of Chileans.

The SOMOS MADERA campaign aims to reach all of Chile to showcase the contributions of the wood industry, which, despite the global benefits of the material and its derivatives, coexists with persistent criticism of forestry production. However, there is a wood culture that the campaign seeks to elevate through stories of people and families, as well as its impact on local economies, the fight against the climate crisis, and important challenges like wood construction.

Lorena Vargas from Pymemad and part of the network explains that "this campaign wants to show our country the virtues of wood, demonstrating how sustainable construction, the generation of biomass for clean energy, and products like pellets for clean combustion contribute to the circular economy, climate change mitigation, and sustainable construction."

The initiative is driven by Futuro Madera, a network of organizations and individuals originating and based in Chile's forest-focused regions and localities, founded in 2021 with the goal of being a platform for dialogue and promotion of the industry in the country. To achieve this, they engaged in a year-long dialogue with nearly seven thousand workers, neighbors, authorities, and academics across all forestry regions of Chile, where the most common sentiment was that the country needs to better understand the wood sector and move past prejudices and myths that obscure the contributions of hundreds of thousands of people from rural areas and the south-central regions of Chile.

Meanwhile, Marianne Hermanns, vice president of CORMA Biobío-Ñuble, stated that "this is the first campaign promoted by Futuro Madera. Working with the guilds has allowed us to identify the need to showcase the benefits and advantages of wood use, all in a well-coordinated team effort to promote something as relevant as wood. This is the challenge for a sustainable, green, and more eco-friendly world."

Along the same lines, Rodrigo O'Ryan, president of AchBiom and a member of Futuro Madera,
commented on the initiative, saying, "Our goal is to show everyone that this green world we all want largely stems from nature-based solutions, where the forestry sector has much to contribute. Trees are a natural source of carbon that will allow us to replace fossil-based carbon sources for bioenergy, biomaterials, and bioproducts."