FSC Adria-Balkan at Greencajt Festival - 50 shades of green: finding the right one

Hundreds of visitors stopped by at the FSC corner to talk about our activities in the Adria-Balkan region at Greencajt festival. This year the festival which was held in Zagreb from June 1st to June 3rd brought more than 70 speakers with international perspectives on sustainability, economy and innovation and attracted a great audience in the capital of Croatia.
 

Among the variety of discussions, talks and presentations, the panel "50 shades of green: finding the right one”, offered an insightful discussion on the importance of businesses and consumers to rely on sustainability claims that can be verified by third parties and which create real impacts on the environment. 

Our National representative Diego Florian talked about how FSC had been doing this in the last 32 years worldwide, through its independent certification system of forest management operations and wood/paper/rubber processing activities. Third-party certification | Forest Stewardship Council™

Diego Florian attended this debate, together with Renata Boldin of HPB, Director of the Directorate for Sustainable Business, Branka Klarin - Petrina of OTP Bank, Director of the Sustainable Finance Support Department, Marina Rožić of Croatian Chamber of Economy, Secretary General and President of the EWN and Draženka Draženović Kostelac of HBOR, Acting Director of Sustainable Finance.

During the debate, well moderated by Hrvoje Kresic, with special reference to the new "Empowering Consumers" EU Directive: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/825/oj/eng, Diego Florian informed how the FSC system has been adapting its labelling and claiming rules to allow companies to comply with the national legislations which will be implemented also in Croatia and Slovenia, as a consequence of the Directive. 

For more details read here FSC & Empowering Consumers | Forest Stewardship Council.

Finally, referring to the role of finance in creating a more sustainable world, Florian mentioned the State of Finance for Nature 2026 | UNEP - UN Environment Programme  and reminded that we have a lot more work to do in order to improve the general situation.

“For every dollar invested in protecting nature, $30 are spent destroying it. In 2023, US$7.3 trillion flowed into nature-negative activities—from fossil fuel subsidies to investments in high-impact sectors like utilities and energy. Meanwhile, only US$220 billion supported Nature based Solutions (NbS), with private finance contributing just US$23 billion. To meet global biodiversity, climate and land restoration targets, NbS investment must increase 2.5 times to US$571 billion annually by 2030—equivalent to just 0.5 per cent of global GDP.

There might be different shades of green, but it is important to focus on more effective and reliable sustainability tools, creating real impacts on the ground and capable to invert the environmental disruptive trend, avoiding time-consuming and money-wasting shortcuts”, Florian concluded.

The debate attracted a significant interest among the audience, which also came to our booth and learned more about FSC certified products like pencils, tissues, tape etc.