Valerie Langer has been engaged in forest conservation campaigns in Canada for over 30 years. She pioneered the international market campaign strategy of influencing logging companies’ practices by engaging their commercial customer base. She and her team of colleagues at Rainforest Solutions Project won the Buckminster Fuller Challenge Award for their role in the collaboration that designed the globally unique model of conservation in the Great Bear Rainforest (British Columbia, Canada). She is the lead consultant for Canopy’s program to accelerate availability of next generation alternatives to pulp made from forest fibre, (e.g. agricultural fibres such as wheat straw for paper pulp, or recycled clothing for new cellulosic thread for rayon). Her work has directly contributed to the conservation of over 5 million hectares of biologically rich forest lands in Canada. Significantly more conservation has been achieved indirectly as major corporate wood and paper purchasers developed and implemented policies that shifted them away from endangered forest fibre globally and towards recycled and FSC certified alternatives and now to non-wood pulp fibres. Valerie’s focus is on large scale forest conservation by leveraging markets, investments and innovation to remove the pressure to log for unsustainable forest products.
Updated February 2020.