"If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music." Jimi Hendrix

Good music needs good wood! The Greenpeace Music Wood Campaign is partnering with the music industry to protect threatened forest habitats and safeguard the future of the trees critical to making musical instruments. We are working together to increase the availability of traditional woods used by musical instrument manufacturers that can be certified to the exacting management standards of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and demonstrating, one species at a time, that there is a strong and growing market for well-managed, FSC certified wood.

The FSC, founded by Greenpeace and other organizations in the early 1990s, has become the gold standard of environmental certification in the forestry industry. Its logo is now internationally recognized as the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" for forest management. The FSC promotes environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world's forests. It brings people together to find solutions to the problems created by bad forestry practices and to reward good forest management by providing market incentives to improve forest management. The idea has become a huge success. Over the past 10 years, 50 million hectares in more than 60 countries have been certified according to FSC standards.

Although musical instrument manufacturing is not the driving force behind vanishing critical forest habitat, instrument makers are uniquely positioned to lead the way in sustainability, and to help reshape forest management to protect some of the most threatened forests and valuable timber species in the world.

In the first phase of the Music Wood campaign Greenpeace is working together with instrument makers, musicians and private forest owners in Southeast Alaska to bring forestry practices up to FSC standards. Currently, there are no FSC certified forests in the entire state of Alaska and the predominant logging practice remains clear-cutting. Transitioning private land suppliers over to the FSC system will ensure a well-managed supply of Sitka spruce for the long term, meeting the needs of manufacturers while greatly benefiting Alaskan Native communities.

Our goal is to create a demand by consumers and businesses for FSC certified "good wood" as the only acceptable music wood from the North American coastal temperate rainforest.