STTC Participant in the picture: City of Madrid’s year of sustainable tropical timber action

A wide range of projects are underway in Madrid as part of the city’s European Sustainable Tropical Timber Coalition Action Plan.

The multi-faceted initiative is targeting the range of citizens, from timber suppliers and procurers, to school students. It is also including everything from online informational campaigns, literature and presentations, to tropical timber posters and brochures.

On signing up to the plan, the Madrid City Council Municipal Consumption Institute said that it aligned with the Spanish capital’s long-term commitment to minimise environmental impact and encourage responsible consumption. It has been an accredited Fair Trade City since 2011 and was one of the first cities to back the STTC on its launch in 2013.

More recently, Madrid’s drive for sustainability has stepped up again.

“The city is facing a new era with a new municipal government even more involved in these matters,” said the council in its Action Plan proposal. “It has led to Madrid becoming an example for other Spanish cities thanks to its capacity to raise public awareness and develop new initiatives for responsible consumption.”

As part of its broader civic Sustainable Consumption Plan, running to 2019, Madrid has launched an open access sustainable consumption website with information and links. Under the STTC Action Plan this will now include a section on sustainable tropical timber procurement, with articles, brochures and a diary of Action Plan Events.

Another project is the creation of ‘good practice files’, detailing sustainable tropical timber procurement best practice, for inclusion on the municipal website www.madrid.es.

Educational sustainable consumption workshops will also take place in schools in the final term of the year, targeting children and teenagers from five to 16. Offered to 345 schools, these will cover the environmental benefits of using sustainable tropical timber and responsible consumption of timber more generally.

Madrid is also set to host the fourth national meeting of Fair Trade Cities on October 26, including a presentation on tropical timber sustainability issues by Iván Bermejo Barbier of responsible trade NGO Copade.

Moreover, the latter has collaborated with the city in producing a special brochure for dissemination at municipal events detailing STTC activities. This includes sections on the role of sustainable tropical timber application in helping meet Sustainable Development Goals and life cycle assessment research supported by the STTC.

A sustainable tropical timber bus shelter poster campaign will also run in November and tropical timber events are planned for Madrid’s ‘emblematic new public space’ dedicated to promoting ‘responsible consumption in a social economy’. This is set to open in January 2018.

STTC mission merits industry support for future

The Sustainable Tropical Timber Coalition (STTC) has recorded significant achievements in its first five years, but now needs wider industry input and backing to take its mission forward in support of European sustainable tropical timber market growth.

That is the view of the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH), the founder and to date principal funder of the STTC, which has announced it will rein back its financial support and support the Coalition towards stronger ownership by industry from the end of 2018.

IDH Program Officer Nienke Sleurink said the STTC had more valuable work ahead.

“It’s done a lot already,” she said. “When it launched in 2013 the tropical timber market was in crisis due to the economic situation and had concerns other than the sustainability question. Now the market has picked up and interest in sustainability has revived and increased.  Against that backdrop, the STTC has become a hub which has made it easier to discuss the challenges and solutions for promoting sustainable tropical timber and has effectively created an enabling environment in support of the market for it.

“However, there is still scope for improvement. The timber industry’s energy and creativity in this area needs to be maintained and stepped up further, now that demand for tropical timber is picking up again. Strong, Europe wide commitments to sustainable sourcing continue to be needed to delink tropical timber trade from deforestation.”

IDH, she added, generally designed its programmes with an exit strategy and, as various STTC projects will finalise in 2018, it felt the end of next year was the right time to ‘transition’ the coalition over to the timber sector.

“We will continue to be involved and provide some support, perhaps as a secretariat, but our role will be more in an enabling capacity,” said Ms Sleurink.

The most likely option for the STTC going forward seems to be a membership structure. “But funding needs to be found for it and someone paid to coordinate it,” she said.

A poll of delegates at the recent STTC Conference in Aarhus, she added, showed there was a clear desire and mandate for the organisation to carry on and develop.

“We’d now like to hear from the industry and other STTC supporters, to get their input on how and in what form the STTC should continue,” she said.

To contribute your ideas email sleurink@idhtrade.org.

Netherlands leads in sustainably sourced market share

Source Mark van Benthem, Probos

According to independent research, certified sustainably sourced material holds a higher share of the timber market in the Netherlands than anywhere else in the world.

That’s one dramatic statement from the latest report of the Dutch market by non-profit forest products and sustainability institute Probos.

The detailed publication, covering the range of forest products and Probos’s fifth Netherlands report, also highlights the rapidity of the rise in sales of sustainably sourced products.

In 2005, they accounted for just 13.3% of Dutch sawn goods and wood-based panels sales and 0.5% of the paper and paperboard market. In 2015, the year up to which the report covers, those figures were 83.3% and 65.4% respectively. By volume, that translates into a rise in sustainably sourced lumber and panels of 3.6 million m3 RWE in a decade.

The study’s definition of sustainably sourced is demonstrating compliance with Dutch government procurement policy sustainability criteria. This comprises timber certified under FSC and PEFC schemes, but also, for the first time in 2015, the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme (MTCS), which is also now accepted by the Dutch authorities as demonstrable proof of sustainability.

Of sawn timber types, softwood boasts the highest sustainably sourced share at  85.4%, with tropical next at 63.3%.  Temperate hardwood lags at 33.7%, which is attributed to the market volumes of uncertified packaging material, but it saw the biggest rise in share since 2013. Highest sustainably sourced share of all goes to wood-based panels at 88.2%.

Despite the progress made, however, Probos says the Netherlands still has someway to go to achieve 100% sustainable sourcing, with some sources of supply more problematic than others. It also highlights that, while sustainably sourced tropical timber’s market share may have risen, the total size of the Dutch tropical market has shrunk dramatically, from 730,000 m3 RWE to 400,000 between 2005 and 2015.

“Hence, Dutch influence in encouraging suppliers to adopt sustainable forest management policies has been strongly reduced, giving even more cause for international cooperation to make timber flows world-wide more sustainable, such as via the European Sustainable Tropical Timber Coalition (STTC),” states Mark van Benthem of Probos.

The next Netherlands report, covering 2017 is planned for next year. A study of the Belgian market covering 2016 is also underway.

A more detailed article on the study is available here and the full report can be downloaded here (Dutch only).

Delegates show commitment at STTC Conference 2017

Source Mark van Benthem, Probos

For an organisation dedicated to growing the EU market for sustainably sourced tropical timber, the Sustainable Tropical Timber Coalition’s (STTC) conference this year got to the heart of the issue.

The title of the event in Aarhus, Denmark, Sustainably sourced tropical timber: Selling a positive story, was the core theme being promotion and marketing.

To tackle the topic, speakers came not only from across the EU timber sector, but also from NGOs and marketing agencies, with a keynote delivered by brands expert and marketeer Nigel Hollis, Executive Vice President of international consultancy Kantar Millward Brown.

Setting the scene, the conference began with tour of sustainable tropical timber applications across the host city.

The 110-strong international audience also heard presentations about STTC-backed marketing and promotion-centred Action Plans for developing and diversifying the European sustainable tropical timber market and encouraging  sustainable procurement programmes.

Mr Hollis highlighted the importance of confidence and differentiation in marketing. He also focused on the substance behind the message, stating that in any promotional campaign “great content is more than a great advertisement”.

Delegates were given a still broader perspective on sustainable tropical timber issues in 30-minute table talk sessions, with themes ranging from using Sustainable Development Goals in tropical timber sales and promotion, to the importance of market intelligence in boosting sustainably sourced timber demand. In addition they were challenged to come up with marketing themes.

The Conference closed with a call from STTC founder and backer IDH for ideas on the Coalition’s development as its funding programme in its current form finishes end 2018. A poll of delegates  backed the STTC’s continuation.

Read the full article here

Certification a sustainable forest management indicator, says UN

Source Mark van Benthem, Probos

In its latest Progress towards Sustainable Development Goals report, the United Nations has included forest certification as an indicator ‘to report on the progress made in achieving sustainable forest management’.

This report shows, for the first time, that the UN regards forest certification as one of the key tools to put sustainable forest management into practice.

The Statistical Index that comes with the report also looks at the continuing growth of certified forest area, highlighting continuing differences in certification uptake between continents and country categories. John Hontelez, Chief Advocacy Officer of FSC International said the UN had taken a step in the right direction.

“The UN Report is a clear signal to governments, international institutions, forest owners and managers and the business sector that certification, such as FSC facilitates, is a concrete way to help achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” he said.

He added that the FSC has identified 11 SDGs to which its certification scheme is contributing, including No Poverty, Zero Hunger, Clean Water and Sanitation and Life on Land.

Ben Gunneberg, Secretary General and CEO of PEFC International also welcomed the UN move.

“The SDGs recognize the positive contributions of forests rather than treating them merely as a threatened natural resource that requires conservation,” he said. “They make it easier for us to identify and strengthen the links between sustainable forest management and the SDGs that don’t specifically reference forestry, be it poverty alleviation, food security, good health, education, or any of the other goals. This will lead to new partnerships and joint activities with people and organizations that we have still to engage on our sustainability journey.”

Non-profit forest and forest products institute Probos agreed the UN’s recognition of certification in this context was significant.

“The area of certified forest worldwide has risen in recent years to 20% of all forest defined by the FAO as having wood production as a primary or secondary function” said Director Mark van Benthem. “With this validation from the UN we now have added impetus to drive the percentage  still higher.”

 

STTC Project in the picture: communicating certification with facts and confidence

STTC supporters are among those who can now use research-backed, evidence-based messaging underlining the sustainability and other positive impacts of FSC certification in their efforts to increase sales of certified tropical timber.
The messaging has come out of international research undertaken under the Value and Impact Analysis Initiative (VIA), which is led by the ISEAL Alliance (IA), the UK-based NGO with a mission to ‘strengthen sustainability standards for the benefit of people and the environment’.
VIA was partly funded by the STTC’s main backer and founder, the Dutch-based Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH), which believes the research will “transform the position of the tropical timber industry” by demonstrating that trade in sustainably sourced materials is an “important driver of forest conservation”.

The initiative began as a joint venture  between three major consumer market forest products players, IKEA, Tetra Pak and international home improvement group Kingfisher, and was also backed by suppliers SCA and Precious Woods.

“Today, more and more businesses want to have a positive impact on the environment and society  and use voluntary certification to differentiate products and ensure supply chain sustainability,” states the ISEAL Alliance. “The challenge is how to better internalize and communicate the added value of sourcing certified materials. Businesses need well supported evidence to communicate with confidence regarding the social and environmental benefits of certification.”

VIA’s research into FSC certification impacts was undertaken by an independent international Technical Advisory Group (TAG), including WWF International,  NEPCon, Greenpeace International, the World Resources Institute and experts from Princeton and Ohio State Universities.

They established methods for organizing and analysing evidence on FSC certification effects and agreed on language for developing communications.

The initial outcome is a range of independently researched and sanctioned messages and statements, which the ISEAL Alliance says businesses can confidently use in the marketplace, covering topics from biodiversity, to worker health and safety.

Statements include:

  • FSC aims to keep forests healthy and resilient through responsible management practices including include setting aside areas from commercial logging. Of the nearly 20 million hectares of tropical and drier sub-tropical forest under FSC certified management in 2014, over 3 million were set aside.
  • In several Congo Basin countries, living and working conditions were all better for workers in FSC-certified forests than forests without certification.

Jamie Lawrence, Kingfisher’s Senior Sustainability Advisor – Forests said the VIA could represent a turning point for certification validation and communication.

“We’ve seen ourselves the positive impact of FSC certification on forests,” he said. “However measuring and communicating this impact can be challenging. An immediate result of VIA has been a motion at the FSC General Assembly calling for the ‘harnessing of audit data to improve assurance integrity, monitoring and evaluation and the value proposition for FSC’. This is the start of a game-changing movement in voluntary standards as they move towards a data driven standards setting, based on outcomes and impact as opposed to today’s rules-based systems.”

He added Kingfisher itself would use the verified messaging in social media, sustainability reporting and investor disclosures. They will also feed into branding as part of the company’s ONE Kingfisher corporate plan.

IDH said VIA’s ‘transformational messaging’ around certified sustainability was also at the core of STTC’s latest Conference in Aarhus, Denmark – Sustainable tropical timber – Selling a positive story. The theme was that ‘preventing forest degradation necessitates market uptake of verified sustainably sourced tropical timber’, which can only happen when awareness about and confidence in the latter’s wider value and impacts grows.

 

 

 

STIP billed as sustainable wood breakthrough

Independent Netherlands timber research institute Stichting Hout Research (SHR) has unveiled a new business certification mark, guaranteeing to their customers all their timber is 100% sourced from sustainably managed forest, regardless of sustainability certification scheme.

The STIP (Sustainable Timber In Product) scheme has been approved by the Dutch Timber Procurement Assessment Committee, TPAC. SHR Director Oscar van Doorn said it also aligns with the objective of supporters of the Netherlands’ multi-sector-backed Green Deal and new Wood Covenant to remove logistical barriers to use of sustainable timber.

“It’s a breakthrough,” he said.  “Removing uncertainties about mixing woods with different chain of custody (CoC) certificates and facilitating achievement of the broad-based goal that 100% of timber is from responsibly managed forestry.”

The STIP is not itself a CoC, he explained, but a business mark, confirming that a business only sells timber from sustainable sources, for example FSC or PEFC forests.

“It entails fewer administrative and logistical obligations and less paperwork for woodworking companies and their customers,” said Mr Van Doorn.

He explained that to become a STIP company, a business submits to exhaustive evaluation by experts from an accredited certification body to ensure all their timber is sourced from responsibly and sustainably managed forest. Once approved, they are periodically audited to ensure maintenance of STIP standards.

For more: www.STIP.org (currently Dutch only).

Great content at STTC marketing conference

Read more

Great content is more than a great ad

Source Mark van Benthem, Probos

by Nigel Hollis

I spent a day last week at a conference hosted by the European Sustainable Tropical Timber Coalition (STTC). The primary objective of the Coalition is to increase demand for tropical timber, which is tough to do when most people assume that cutting down any tropical timber is bad. But a tough challenge often brings out great creativity.

As I learnt from the conference, far from destroying forests, sustainable timber harvesting helps preserve them. A presentation by Nienke Stam of the Netherlands-based IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, highlighted that simply protecting tropical forests is no guarantee that they will not be logged. One example showed how a national park in Guatemala had been extensively deforested over time while nearby certified concessions used for sustainable harvesting had not. If people have a vested interest in the forest then they are more likely to protect it.

However, increasing demand for sustainable tropical timber faces many challenges. Not least the fact that many architects do not know just how many tropical timbers there are or the benefits of using the different types. A presentation by Loa Dalgaard Worm of the FSC Denmark highlighted a very creative way of taking on that challenge. Instead of producing ads or brochures highlighting the wide range of timbers available, FSC Denmark used toy animals made from a selection of different tropical timbers to get them into an architect’s office. Architects readily allowed the FSC to come and make their pitch for sustainably sourced tropical timber in return for getting one of the toys. Later the toy would serve as a good reminder of the colour and tactile nature of each of the woods that was available.

However, the European STTC faces a much bigger challenge if it is to improve demand for sustainably sourced tropical timber. Not the least of which is that World Wildlife Fund campaigns from years ago have left most of us with the impression that cutting any tropical timber is a bad thing. This is a huge barrier that must help overcome if it is to increase demand for sustainable tropical timber, helping to protect the forest and local people’s livelihoods.

My role in the conference was to help the delegates identify ideas that could form the basis for an effective marketing campaign to boost demand and overcome negative perceptions. While I cannot share the ideas we came up with, I will say that the discussions reminded me of the fact that wood, unlike almost all the alternatives that might be used for construction, is regenerative. You can recycle steel and plastic but it does not grow back. Wood does and it looks beautiful too.

FSC Denmark’s wooden animals reminded me that great marketing is not about making ads, it is about solving problems. What other non-traditional marketing solutions come to your mind? Please share your thoughts.

Original blog: www.millwardbrown.com/global-navigation/blogs/post/mb-blog/2017/09/27/great-content-is-more-than-a-great-ad

ETTF leaves implementing position, but backs STTC in ‘vital role’

André de Boer

The European Timber Trade Federation (ETTF) has stood down as implementing partner for the Sustainable Tropical Timber Coalition, with IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative taking over the role. But ETTF Secretary General André de Boer, said his organisation continues to back the STTC, which, he maintained, has “established firm foundations for developing its mission in the years ahead – to grow the European market for certified sustainable tropical wood of all species.”

The ETTF, which represents timber trade federations across Europe, was one of the founding partners of the STTC in 2013.

“We backed the STTC because, like other supporters, we were seriously concerned about the long-term decline of tropical timber imports into Europe,” said Mr de Boer. “This was not only of commercial interest for our members, who feared that a generation of European specifiers and end users was emerging with little or no knowledge of tropical timber’s performance potential. There was also the risk that the loss of sales to the sustainability-focused European market could disincentivise uptake of sustainable forest management in tropical countries.”

He added that the STTC had already recorded a number of notable achievements.

“It has raised awareness of the availability of certified sustainably sourced tropical timber, including lesser known species, and through communications, promotion and its annual conference started to change market perceptions about the material.”

The STTC Action Plan programme was also a major achievement, funding companies, federations and local governments, with the latest being those of Rotterdam and Berlin, to adopt sustainable tropical timber procurement policies and other strategies to improve tropical timber’s image and increase its use.

“The STTC has accomplished much in a short time and has a vital role to play into the future to make sustainably sourced tropical timber a European norm and a mainstream manufacturing and construction material. In so doing, it can also drive the spread of sustainable tropical forest management,” said Mr de Boer. “We wish it and IDH, as new implementing partner, well and will continue as one of its most committed supporters.”