Ecos Corporation began working with the Queensland Timber Board in 1995. QTB represents the timber industry in the Australian state of Queensland. Faced with an ongoing conflict around environmental issues, QTB was interested in working with us to develop and implement a new approach for the industry's future.

We brought QTB together with a range of stakeholders including the Wilderness Society , other environmental groups, timber workers and government officials. The groups discussed possible future logging policies that would meet environmentalists' standards and still provide commercial growth opportunities for Queensland's timber industry. For over three years, we helped QTB understand the benefits and future opportunities of sustainable growth.

In mid-September 1999, an historic agreement was reached in Queensland over the issue of long-term forest conservation. After years of conflict between industry, government and environmental organisations, the 'peace in the forests' deal for south-east Queensland was agreed on by all sides and set an international precedent. The timber industry, largely due to the work of QTB, agreed to halt logging in old growth forests by 2025 and move to all-plantation timber sources. Queensland was the first Australian state to make such a commitment. In addition, logging in some high conservation value forests is to be phased out within two to four years.

The Wilderness Society said the agreement was 'light years' ahead of other states. The organisation also said that considerable credit for the agreement should be given to QTB 'for being the first industry body in Australia to recognise that it is no longer environmentally or socially responsible to log old growth and wilderness forests'.

Prior to the agreement being reached, Ecos assisted QTB in achieving a dramatic change in attitude - from seeing environmentalism as a threat, to seeing it as presenting new commercial opportunities. The General Manager of the QTB, Rod McInnes, said, 'There is now a hard commercial impetus to industry embracing environmentalism, and there are plenty of examples of industries successfully making this shift and gaining substantial market share as a result.'

QTB is now widely regarded as the leading forest industry organisation in Australia. It is showing the way for the industry to move from confrontation to constructive debate, while developing good relationships with key environmental leaders. Queensland has found itself at the forefront of business strategy in the forestry industry, having now developed proactive commercial approaches to issues such as biodiversity protection, climate change and eco-labelling.