Until recently, corporate and public timber procurement policies focused on sourcing wood from independently certified forests to promote sustainable forestry practices. However, after 15 years of effort, just 11% of the world’s forests are certified sustainable.
Companies committing to procure certified wood often find that supplies in key species or specifications are not readily available, or are prohibitively expensive. This is particularly true of hardwoods. Certification of American hardwoods, for instance has been limited due to fragmentation of forest ownership, which makes certification and traceability a problem.
Meanwhile, certified tropical hardwoods remain scarce due to the cost of achieving certification in these regions, their low dependence on 'concerned' western markets and lack of technical capacity.
At the same time, there has been growing concern over illegal logging which, according to best estimates, accounts for 8-10% of industrial log supply. This has led to environmentally concerned buyers focusing not just on rewarding top-performing timber suppliers through forest certification, but also on “weeding out the bottom” to ensure they don’t deal with suppliers of uncertified wood that might come from illegal forest operations.
Forest certification schemes have also developed in effect to discriminate against the worst forest operators as well as rewarding the best. They have come up with
percentage-based labelling procedures for products containing a mixture of wood from uncertified and certified forests and indicators for ensuring that wood from non-certified forests meet legality and sustainability standards.
The most widely seen of this type is the FSC Mixed label. This verifies that the content of wood or other forest products in an item which is not from an FSC-certified forest, has been assessed against the FSC’s Controlled Wood Standard. The latter ensures it does not come from timber that’s illegally harvested, genetically modified, supplied in violation of civil rights or sourced from high conservation value forests.
The Controlled Wood Standard is one example of a risk assessment procedure, an approach to timber sourcing gaining growing currency. Other examples are the Timber Trade Federation’s Responsible Purchasing Policy (RPP) which has been adopted by 43 UK timber importers, and the WWF’s Global Forest and Trade Network (GFTN) which includes B&Q, Homebase, Marks & Spencer, Travis Perkins and Jewson.
The World Resources Institute’s guide, Sustainable procurement of wood and paper-based products, also relies on risk assessment.
The process requires timber buyers to gather relevant information on forestry sources from suppliers. The latter are then risk rated. Low risk companies may have to provide a declaration that none of their wood derives from controversial sources. High risk suppliers are generally required to move towards independent legality verification or full certification.
Risk assessment is proving effective in encouraging adoption of responsible procurement practices and helping to increase availability of labelled wood products. It allows resources to be channelled into solving problems in “high risk” forest areas, while low risk suppliers do not face new and unnecessary bureaucratic demands.
The UK government has made risk assessment a key component of its current timber procurement policy, acknowledging that there is no need to prove timber’s precise origin to demonstrate legality if it comes from a country with “good forest governance”.
Timber suppliers are consequently responding by compiling the facts to prove they are “low risk”. Last year, for example, the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) launched a “Data-based assessment of the risk of illegal logging of the US hardwood resource”. Undertaken by a team of independent consultants, the study assesses the risk of illegal logging in the US and of American hardwood coming from unacceptable sources as defined in the FSC Controlled Wood Standard. Preliminary results from the research, which is due to be released shortly, indicate that there is a low risk of either.
EU legal options
These new risk assessment procedures look set to assume greater prominence in the future. The European Commission, for instance, has been examining various “legislative options” to combat illegal timber entering member states. While there is broad support for this among NGOs and the timber industry, however, there has been debate over the form that legislation might take. One proposal is that no timber should enter the EU unless it is licensed as legal by the exporting country. However, this effectively renders all wood illegal until proven otherwise.
The alternative is a law that makes it an offence to sell illegal timber in the EU, putting the onus on the prosecution to demonstrate that wood derives from an illegal source. Here, high risk imports would be the principal target and there would be less of a burden on the private sector. This approach would also encourage more importers and distributors to implement risk assessment procedures.
There is a precedent for this approach in the US's Lacey Act which is being amended to encompass timber as well as its original subject, wildlife imports. In the UK, Barry Gardiner MP, the prime minister's special envoy for forestry, has introduced a private member's bill in part based on the US model that would “make it an offence for any importer or distributor to sell or distribute in the UK any wood harvested, manufactured or otherwise dealt with illegally in the country from which the wood originated or through which it passed or was transhipped”.
It’s unlikely that Gardiner’s proposals will be implemented as Defra favours an EU-wide solution. And preliminary indications are that an upcoming EC Communication will, instead, favour a law that imposes a requirement for due diligence on importers and distributors. However, this would still push risk assessment procedures further to the fore, with all companies engaged in the manufacture or trade of wood and wood products in the EU placed under a legal obligation to introduce the kinds of systems for risk rating suppliers described in this article.
Added to the existing focus on promoting certification wherever it is available, this would make the EU timber industry a much more powerful driver of change in the international wood trade.
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Forest certification schemes have developed percentage-based labelling |
Keywords: FSC PEFC AHEC
