Brian Dumaine is going to be the keynote speaker at our conference this year in Nashville. He’s the global editor of FORTUNE magazine but also directs FORTUNE’s green technology and environmental policy stories. So we’re in for a thought-provoking talk. In fact, I heard Brian speak earlier this year at FORTUNE’s Brainstorm Green, where he moderated a session on maintaining green business in challenging economic times. I found that his views on how to simultaneously do the right thing for the environment and business were very enlightening. He is also the author of the newly published The Plot to Save the Planet: How Visionary Entrepreneurs and Corporate Titans Are Creating Real Solutions To Global Warming. Recently, I had the chance to ask him about his views on the green economy and his thinking on breakthrough green technologies and how it relates to sustainable forestry.

Click on the play button below to listen to our discussion.

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A recent UN report – 2008-2009 UNECE/FAO Forest Products Annual Market Review – says there’s potential for significant demand for certified products due to increased interest in avoiding illegal sources, new forest values such as carbon sequestration, and green building initiatives.

It also says that giving “exclusive recognition to particular forest-certification brands may help drive demand for these brands at the expense of wider appreciation of the environmental merits of wood.”

At SFI Inc., we absolutely agree. I have said all along that the world needs more forests certified to reliable and trusted programs like SFI, and the best way to do this is to make sure procurement policies accept them all.

It is distressing to keep reporting that just 10 percent of the world’s forests are certified – even more distressing when the UN report suggests the total might be closer to eight percent.

Let’s hope the objective information in this report – prepared by the UN Economic Commission for Europe and the Food and Agriculture Organization – will help us move from rhetoric to reality when we talk about the value of third-party forest certification.

There is one really bright spot in the review, especially for the SFI program, and that’s the rapid growth of chain-of-custody certification. While forest certification has slowed, chain of custody is growing rapidly in many regions – and the UN report reports the SFI program led the pack. Here’s what it says about chain-of-custody certificates: “In terms of numbers, the most significant of these is the SFI Program in North America. The numbers of its certificates issued increased dramatically during the course of 2008 from 100 certificates covering 400 locations to almost 400 certificates covering 1,000 locations.”

As you may know, Forest Ethics have recently launched a new tactic in their campaign efforts against the SFI community. We’ve released a statement on SFI’s home page addressing Forest Ethics’ tactics – you can read it here.