Join us on Instagram live, Thursday at 5pm, as Kat Scott, Architects' Climate Action Network coordinator, engages David Hopkins, CEO of the Timber Trade Federation, in a conversation about climate change with a focus on tropical timber.
Kat will interrogate David about aspects of the timber’s real social and environmental impact – asking what you always wanted to know but might have been too afraid to ask – as David sets out the case for the use of FLEGT licenced tropical timber.
The conversation aims to demystify FLEGT timber licensing and get to the heart of important questions for designers, makers and specifiers conscious of the significance of a material’s provenience and supply chain.
Can FLEGT licensing be seen as a mechanism from the ‘West’ to exert control over developing/ less developed countries? How credible is a FLEGT license? And how is this ensured? Can the FLEGT Action Plan help reduce deforestation?
Join us on Thursday to find out! Follow us on Instagram to watch the live stream and ask your own questions in the live chat.
If you are convinced by the conversation, don’t forget to enter the design competition Conversations about Climate Change before the deadline!
Kat Scott is interested in carbon and the impacts of the built environment on wider ecologies and natural systems. She plays an active role in three of the architecture profession’s leading climate advocacy groups - Architects Declare, the London Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI) and the Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN). Kat coordinates ACAN’s ‘Where the Wild Things Aren’t’ group. This group is focused on addressing the challenges facing “wild things” in a time of critical biodiversity decline and habitat loss. WTWA are working to raise awareness of the impacts of the architectural profession and construction industry on nature, and to support the vital shift towards a new form of professionalism dedicated to ecological regeneration. Kat additionally sits on the Architects Declare Steering Group, is part of the London Energy Transformation Initiative, and helped to produce the ‘LETI Embodied Carbon Primer’ and ‘LETI Climate Emergency Design Guide’, both released earlier this year.
David Hopkins is director of the Timber Trade Federation. He is a former environmental journalist and has worked for the Times, Guardian, Independent and BBC, as well as editing several trade and industry titles focused on utility and environmental markets. He was formerly a co-founding director of Carbon International, a clean-technology and environmental industries market development consultancy and his clients have included the London Stock Exchange, the World Bank, a variety of blue-(and green)-chip energy, water and waste majors, early stage technology start ups and their investors, and all points in between. David is a founder and non-executive director of low-carbon community charity Carbon-Leapfrog – providing pro-bono professional services for social enterprise.
Conversations about Climate Change is a partnership between the Building Centre and the Timber Trade Federation. Supported by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
