IDH identifies partnership prospects for forest action

Photo: CIFOR

IDH – The Sustainable Trade initiative is revising its strategy on tropical timber. It’s still a work in progress, but according to Willem Klaassens, IDH Markets and SourceUp programme Director, a core theme is already emerging. It’s that there’s no magic bullet for combating illegal tropical timber trade and deforestation and ensuring sustainability.

“What is needed is a combination of actions; achieving synergies between initiatives, complementing voluntary measures with regulation and strengthening cooperation and partnership between public and private sector and demand and supply-side stakeholders,” said Mr Klaassens. “Only by getting this combination right, will we achieve results.”

IDH works with multiple stakeholders to achieve sustainable trade in global value chains. In recent years it has been active in producer countries on sustainability initiatives for a range of tropical commodities, including soy, palm oil and cocoa, but its tropical timber involvement has been more market focused. “We now think the time is right to get back more on the ground in producer countries on tropical timber projects, notably in central Africa,” said Mr Klaassens. “This follows extensive discussion with stakeholders, but has also been prompted by the advent of the EU Green Deal and growing influence of the carbon agenda. These are raising interest in issues around sustainable tropical timber and deforestation, increasing opportunities for new initiatives.”

One potential aspect of the new IDH strategy, tying in with its aim to encourage increased stakeholder collaboration, is greater engagement with Chinese actors in the tropical trade. “China wields huge market influence, notably in the Congo Basin where it’s estimated to take 50% of timber production,” said Mr Klaassens. “We’re looking at possibilities for connecting with Chinese concessionaries; acting as broker between them and local authorities and communities to develop partnerships; saying to them, ‘we know you’re not yet certified, or adhering to all the rules we’d like you to, but we’re here to guide and help’. We’re also considering setting up an IDH operation in China.”

While IDH continues to support certification, it sees the way forward as certification operating within a sustainable landscape approach. Hence the significance to its strategy going forward of its SourceUp verified sourcing areas programme. With 11 projects underway in tropical countries worldwide, this involves establishment of ‘Compacts’, comprising the range of stakeholders, from small holder forest owners, farmers and SME producers, to major exporters, civil society and regional authorities. These set sustainability priorities and targets – which may include certification – for their area or jurisdiction. Underpinned by the SourceUp platform (www.sourceup.org), the initiative also facilitates investment by buyers and financial institutions in the Compacts.

IDH also founded the Sustainable Tropical Timber Coalition (STTC) and says it has been successful in bringing together stakeholders to tackle key issues and collating and analysing data to inform sustainable tropical timber market development. Mr Klaassens identified its new Thémis market data gathering tool and portal as having particular potential. IDH sees prospects too to work increasingly closely with the International Tropical Timber Technical Association (ATIBT). Among its many activities, Mr Klaassens noted its ambition to find synergies between the FLEGT initiative and sustainability certification. ATIBT is also becoming more involved in the STTC Conference, which will run this year under the banner of the STTC and ATIBT’s Fair&Precious tropical timber marketing campaign, entities, which already work together on this newsletter.

Mr Klaassens maintains there remain ‘some grounds for pessimism’ on tropical forest maintenance, supported by a sustainable timber trade. “But the European Green Deal and growing influence of the carbon agenda put things in a new context,” he said. “They create new impetus for action on the forest and that’s always been IDH’s strategy objective – action and impact rather than just talk.”

 

Reports urge legislation and 100% certified procurement to combat deforestation

Photo: CIFOR

The EU’s imports of agricultural and agroforestry commodities resulted in 3.5 million ha of deforestation between 2005 and 2017. This generated 1.8 billion tons of CO2 and placed it second only to China in terms of its trade causing forest loss. These are among headline figures of a new report from the WWF, ‘Stepping Up? The continuing impact of EU consumption on nature worldwide’. Its core conclusion is that further demand-side legislation is needed to ensure that EU commodity supply chains are deforestation-free and that EU consumption is transparently sustainable.

Voluntary sustainability certification of forest management and forest risk commodities and current EU regulation requiring due diligence to ensure imported wood products are legal in supplier countries, says WWF, are not enough alone to halt deforestation. “Importing countries must also take responsibility for the impacts of their use and consumption,” it states. At the same time, however, the latest study from IDH, ‘Understanding sustainable secondary tropical wood products through data’, concludes that if EU 27 and UK imports of these products were 100% certified sustainable, it would have a major benefit in terms of incentivizing forest maintenance and cutting CO2 emissions.

The WWF report takes its title from the EC’s 2019 adoption of the ‘Communication on stepping up EU action to protect and restore the world’s forests’. This pledges the EU to assess measures to reduce the environmental footprint of its consumption, including through new legislation to ensure deforestation-free supply chains. The commitment was confirmed in the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and Farm to Fork Strategy. The WWF report is aimed at encouraging and backing the EU in developing such measures. It maintains that between 2005 and 2017 31% of tropical deforestation ‘embedded in EU imports’ was concentrated in soy, accounting for 89,000 ha of forest loss a year. Palm oil followed at 24%, beef 10%, wood products 8%, cocoa 6% and coffee 5%.

Current EU measures to tackle illegal timber trade are of value, says the WWF, but limited in effect by the fact that a large degree of deforestation is considered legal under tropical supplier countries’ laws. The WWF also says that, in some cases, third party certification schemes have resulted in lower forest loss, but that ‘market uptake is limited and uneven’. The way forward, it maintains, must be new EU supply-side regulation that ensures:
– Products and commodities placed on the EU market are sustainable instead of only considered ‘legal’ according to the country of origin.
– Mandatory requirements are introduced for businesses and the finance sector compelling them to undertake due diligence and to ensure traceability of commodities and supply chain transparency.

The latest IDH report mentioned above looks at environmental positives of EU and UK imports of certified sustainable tropical wood products. It calculates that currently 25-32% of primary and 29%-37% of secondary tropical timber imports are exposed to certification. If imports were 100% certified sustainable, it would positively impact over 18 mill ha semi and natural tropical forests and reduce CO2 emissions by at least 100 million metric tons. “These figures illustrate the necessity of a new way forward, and demand action by all actors to grow demand for verified sustainable tropical timber,” concludes the report.

 

PAFC Congo Basin on track for 2022 launch

Photo: FAO-FLEGT

The development programme of the Pan African Forest Certification Congo Basin scheme was extended to ensure its ‘effective operationalisation’. But the ground-breaking regional sustainable forest management certification initiative is now on track for a launch date of June 2022.

The PAFC CB scheme is an alliance of the PAFC schemes of Gabon, Cameroon and the Republic of Congo (RoC), with the Programme for the Promotion of Certified Forest Operations (PPECF) as main donor and the International Tropical Timber Technical Association (ATIBT) as project lead. The Congo Basin tropical forest covers 200 million ha, spread across six countries; Gabon, Cameroon, RoC, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR) and Equatorial Guinea. “Logging operations take place in 50 million ha, of which 10 million ha is operating to some form of certified management system; 4.5 million ha is under legality certification, 5.5 million ha FSC and 0.6 million ha PEFC sustainability certification,” said PAFC CB coordinator Germain Yéné.

The focus across the region is now on growing and developing sustainable forest management systems, hence the creation of PAFC CB. “We’ve launched this regional initiative because many aspects of forest management in the three countries involved are similar,” said Thomas Seyvet, Junior Development Officer at PEFC International. “They also share a common border, the same language and similar forest legislation. PAFC Gabon, PAFC Cameroon and PAFC Congo staff are volunteers, so having a regional scheme will simplify management, with the goal to have a regional secretariat managing and maintaining it. It will streamline training for certification bodies and the work of accreditation bodies and will also offer more visibility to PAFC generally.”

The three national PAFC schemes, which will be assimilated into PAFC CB, started the standard setting process for the regional scheme in association with ATIBT in 2019. They developed standard setting documents and undertook a multi-media communications programme to engage stakeholders. They also set up a working group, called the Forum, comprising stakeholders, forest sector experts and national PAFC scheme members. “Following intensive discussions at a conference in Libreville in November 2019, the first PAFC CB standard was issued,” said Mr Yéné. This, he added, underwent exhaustive review, with public consultations, pilot and desktop testing. “The revised standard that came out of this was then reviewed at an online Forum meeting in October 2020,” said Mr Yéné. “The final standard was next put to ATIBT for approval, which then submitted the request for endorsement to PEFC International in December.”

Independent assessor on the project is Form International. It is now evaluating ‘conformity of the PAFC CB standard development process and tools’. Subject to this process, endorsement by the general assembly of the PEFC council is envisaged for this November. In the meantime company and auditor training continues, alongside development of the PAFC CB management structure by the three national certification schemes with ATIBT and PEFC, ready for the summer 2022 launch. PEFC sees PAFC CB having potential ultimately to extend to five countries, with DRC and CAR joining Gabon, Cameroon and RoC. “We’ve already had expressions of interest from concession operators in DRC for it to join too,” said Mr Yéné.

 

Adding value in Africa

Photo: Interholco

Interholco’s IFO operation in the Republic of Congo is demonstrating the viability of value-added tropical timber product manufacture in Africa.

At its Ngombé site, the company’s finger-jointed, laminated window scantling plant now has annual production capacity of 5,000 m3. It’s using a spread of timber species, all FSC-certified, selling to window makers in a range of European markets and looking to break into new ones. Interholco’s (IHC) vice-president sales and production Christophe Janssen acknowledged that developing the market for the products was initially a challenge. “Some established customers for our logs and sawn timber were conservative and said you couldn’t do value added production in Africa. They assumed there would be glue and other problems with scantlings, and that they’d cause machining difficulties,” he said. “It was a case of finding a different type of customer willing to try something new. Once we did that, we were then approached by our traditional customers interested in running trials, after which they placed orders.”

IHC said the key to making the operation a success was its focus on consistent quality and performance. It installed latest processing equipment from the outset and has updated it since. Sourcing all its timber from its own concessions gives it a further handle on quality. “We have complete control of what’s going into the production process and, combining this with tried and tested manufacturing methods, backed by regular quality audits, we’ve shown we can match anything on the market,” said Mr Janssen. Providing assurance on performance, IHC scantlings are also accredited to standard CTB-LCA 221 by French timber technical institute FCBA.

IHC produces a number of scantling types, including KKK (three layers of finger jointed lamellas), DKD (with solid outer layers and finger jointed mid-layer), plus bespoke products with two, three or more layers. Sapele is the plant’s main raw material, but it is also manufacturing in Kosipo and developing use of Tali, Bossé, Sipo, Limbali and Padouk. Utilising this spread of species adds to customer choice and, says IHC, helps make most sustainable use of the forest resource. The scantlings first developed a following among customers in France, Germany and Belgium, and are now starting to sell in Spain and Portugal. IHC is also sending trial batches to the UK and US.

There is clearly now growing ambition in value-added timber product manufacture in Africa, underlined by the decision of ministers at last September’s meeting of CEMAC, the Economic Community of Central Africa, to end Congo Basin log exports at the start of 2022. They also backed formation of the Regional Committee for Sustainable Industrial Development of the Timber Industry (CRIB). Interholco is optimistic about developing its value-added business. It sees ‘opportunities for more specialist items for particular industries’, potentially including laminated construction products.

For the full report on IHC’s value-added strategy: https://www.fair-and-precious.org/en/news/333/growing-ambition-in-african-value-addition.

ATIBT committed to maintaining certified tropical timber’s market momentum

Photo: CIFOR

Environmental certification in the tropics faces challenges, but is a key instrument in combating deforestation and safeguarding the forest’s wealth of biodiversity and its role in mitigating human-made global warming. In fact, as our understanding of the impacts and urgency of the climate crisis grows, the significance of certification is set to increase.

That is the view of the International Tropical Timber Technical Association (ATIBT) and why it is committed to continue supporting forest operations through the certification process and to growing the market for the resulting certified tropical timber and wood products. “Conservation is an essential ally in the fight against deforestation,” said ATIBT Managing Director Benoît Jobbé-Duval. “But it’s through a genuine legal, sustainable and certified forestry economy that we will incentivise forest maintenance and achieve our goals in climate mitigation and habitat and biodiversity preservation.”

In ATIBT’s key focus area of the Congo Basin, 18% of the near 52 million ha of production forests is under certified sustainable forest management (SFM) or legality certification. Due to a range of factors, the advance of certification has slowed and to help overcome the obstacles, ATIBT is supporting a key programme of the Programme for the Promotion of Certified Forest Operations (PPECF). This involves establishment of specialists within forest sector professional unions to coach businesses step-wise towards certification. Another ATIBT objective is to develop and promote synergies between the certification process and the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade initiative (FLEGT). “Through joint action with local stakeholders, we see potential for building links between certification and FLEGT to increase the momentum of both,” said Mr Jobbé-Duval. “Working with professional associations and business partners, the aim is to improve companies’ legality and traceability performance and competence and to support those which wish to commit to certification through the coaching services mentioned earlier.”

ATIBT also sees its consumer-facing role via its Fair&Precious (F&P) tropical timber marketing initiative as vital. Not only it maintains, is it essential to underpin uptake of certified sustainable forest management with healthy demand for its output, the lack of such a market could increase the temptation to convert forest land to other commercial uses. ATIBT describes F&P as a ‘collective brand’ to promote tropical timber and wood products from sustainably, ethically and legally managed sources. To use it, companies must commit to strictest environmental standards and to developing a ‘humane economy that protects people and nature’. “By encouraging purchase of certified tropical wood among target consumer audiences, it acts to enhance the value of the Congo Basin forest resource and to promote good practices within the tropical wood sector,” said Mr Jobbé-Duval.

Looking forward, ATIBT highlights the importance of reaching out to a still wider audience to further the cause of tropical forest and timber certification. “It is particularly important to take into account Chinese businesses, which consume over 50% of wood produced in the Congo Basin,” said Mr Jobbé-Duval. “They are key players in the move towards ever more sustainable procurement and we expect them to become increasingly involved in coming years.”

Interholco wood forest figures win Conversations about climate change competition

Photo: Interholco

Wildlife sculptures in certified tropical hardwood from Interholco are among winners of a UK competition designed to raise awareness of the importance of sustainable forest management and its role in climate change mitigation.

The competition, Conversations about climate change, was run by the UK Timber Trade Federation (TTF). It formed part of its government-funded campaign to highlight the environmental, economic and social impacts of the UK and EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade initiative (FLEGT). Designers were invited to create pieces in timber from supplier countries engaged in FLEGT Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs). Their objective was to inspire conversations about the wide-ranging importance of the forest as a source of livelihoods and biodiversity and, in particular, due to its role in climate regulation. “People respond to objects and design at a different level than to words on a screen or piece of paper,” said TTF FLEGT Communications Executive Lucy Bedry. “Our aim was to use that to help convey the FLEGT story.”

The competition clearly struck a chord among designers, attracting over 100 entries from around the world. “We were thrilled with how far the message reached and the response,” said Ms Bedry. “We had entries from across Europe, South America, Asia, Africa and Australasia.“ The miniature wildlife sculptures, called Forest Dwellers, were designed by architect Tom Wilson and comprise a chimpanzee, gorilla, bongo antelope and forest elephant. He used FSC-certified utile, sapele and iroko, all sourced from Interholco’s Republic of the Congo operations via Danzer UK. They were among six winners selected by the judges, who were drawn from the timber trade, construction, design, architecture and retail. Wilson had previously ‘steered clear’ of using tropical timber, but was impressed with what he’d learned about FLEGT through the competition, notably its ‘governmental level and holistic approach to sustainability, both environmental and economic’. “I would now perhaps consider the use of tropical timbers more, provided I could be sure of the provenance and legality of the supply chain,” he said.

The competition winners are all on display in an exhibition at the London Building Centre, which runs until April 23. Due to pandemic lockdown, this has initially had to be online, but it’s hoped that restrictions will be relaxed in time to allow visitors to see it in reality. The goal is also to tour the exhibition in Europe in association with other national timber trade federations. TTF Chief Executive David Hopkins said the competition successfully communicated the core value of the forest and the role sustainable forest management and timber production plays in preserving it. “Tropical forests are often taken advantage of, and forest land is cleared for other uses,” he said. “That is where responsible forest management and timber sourcing become an essential part of the solution; incentivizing forest maintenance to prevent habitat loss and reduce harmful carbon emissions.”

Such was the popularity of the competition that the TTF is planning a second, with the winners’ exhibition timed to coincide with the COP26 UN climate change conference in Glasgow in November. It is also hoping to construct a timber pavilion in the city at the same time, attended by representatives of FLEGT VPA countries, to highlight the value of a sustainable timber industry, the forest and wood use in climate change mitigation.

The multiple values of tropical forests in a nutshell

Photo: CIFOR

A new fact sheet from Fair&Precious (F&P) provides a quick-read guide to tropical forests – their extent, their environmental and economic value and the vital need for their maintenance through sustainable management.

‘Tropical forests – the facts and figures’ underlines the key role the world’s 1.8 billion ha of tropical forests play in climate regulation through carbon sequestration from the atmosphere. Their carbon storage potential varies from region to region, but in total the forests of South America, sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia and Oceania hold an estimated 247 gigatonnes of carbon. That is nearly five times accumulated annual global greenhouse gas emissions. Tropical forests provide a huge range of ecosystem services, benefiting not just local forest communities, but the human population worldwide. These include provision of food, fresh water, raw materials – including, of course, timber –and medicinal resources.

In recent years the economic value of these services – the forest’s ‘natural capital’ – has been increasingly closely studied and it is now calculated that they are worth an estimated US$2,700 per ha per year. Globally, that adds up to an annual figure of US$4.86 trillion. Despite increasing understanding of the all-round worth of the tropical forest, however, large areas are still lost each year, primarily through conversion to agriculture and building development. It is estimated that the average annual deforestation rate since 1990 has been 0.5% of total tropical forest area, with 80% of that loss concentrated in four countries: Brazil, Indonesia, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Malaysia. The fact sheet points out that other countries, including Suriname, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Belize, Gabon, Guyana, Bhutan, Zambia and French Guiana, are succeeding in maintaining their forest resources and are categorized as ‘high forest cover and low deforestation’ (HFLD) under the UN Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation programme (REDD+).

The key for the future of the climate, of bio-diversity and for humankind to continue to benefit from the tropical forest’s abundance of ecosystem services, states the fact sheet, is for more of it to come under verified sustainable management. Currently just 6.5% of the total area is certified as sustainably managed under the FSC and PEFC schemes. That needs to increase and one way to incentivize this is to grow the international market for verified sustainable tropical timber. “For example, it is calculated that, if the seven leading European tropical timber-importing countries bought exclusively verified sustainable material, an additional 12.5 million hectares of tropical forest would come under sustainable management to meet that demand,” the F&P fact sheet concludes.

A key conference year for tropical timber

While the pandemic may effect scheduling and the form they take, 2021 is set to be an important year for international conferences with interest and potential impacts for tropical timber and forestry sectors.

World Forestry Congress

With dates yet to be set after postponement from May, the World Forestry Congress in Seoul will address the state and future of forests globally and efforts to achieve sustainable development goals in the context of recovery from Covid-19. It will look to define the role of forests in the 2030 global development agenda and other policy frameworks, such as the Paris Agreement and Global Forest Goals. It also aims to identify measures needed for the forest sector to contribute to the post-pandemic objective to ‘build back better’.
“Forests must be an integral part of discussions and decisions to be made on sustainable development, because this will determine the health, wellbeing and stability of the planet and the people,” state the organisers.

Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity

The fifteenth meeting of the UN Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Kunming, China, rescheduled from last October to the second half of 2021, will see adoption of a post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Billed as a ‘stepping stone towards the 2050 UN Vision of “Living in harmony with nature” ’, the goal is to mainstream biodiversity into national development plans worldwide. The draft framework sets out five long-term biodiversity goals for 2050 and 20 targets to achieve by 2030. Among the aims are to reduce extinctions and increase endangered species populations. It also sets a goal for nature to contribute ‘at least [30%] of efforts to achieve targets of the Paris Agreement on climate change’. Deforestation and its related climate impacts will, of course, be central to discussions. How ambitious decisions here will be remain to be seen, with some countries reported to be resistant to forest-related targets that restrict agriculture.

Carrefour International du Bois

The Carrefour International du Bois is scheduled to take place from May 26-28 at the Parc Beaujoire in Nantes, France. The biannual event is billed as Europe’s leading exclusively timber trade exhibition and the last show attracted 11,500 visitors from 85 countries and 563 exhibitors. The STTC and ATIBT/Fair&Precious are set to contribute to the conference programme.

IUCN World Conservation Congress

A core theme of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress in Marseilles from September 3-11 will also be ‘nature-based climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts’. “The full potential of the world’s natural carbon sinks and reservoirs that can contribute to a climate-resilient and biodiversity-rich future has yet to be unlocked,” states the IUCN. “This will require strengthening institutional and governance capacity for ecosystem planning and management. Policy and decision-making may require trade-offs to optimise benefits for biodiversity, climate change and other relevant sectors.”

UN Climate Change Conference

Among the topics of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow from November 1-12 will be ‘green recovery’; taking the opportunity of reconstruction from pandemic to move to a lower environmental impact global economic model. “While we focus on fighting the immediate crisis of the Coronavirus, we must not lose sight of the challenges of climate change,” said Conference President UK MP Alok Sharma. “The steps we take to rebuild our economies will have a profound impact on our societies’ future sustainability, resilience and wellbeing and COP26 can be a moment where the world unites behind a clean, resilient recovery.”

In the lead up to the Conference, the COP26 and Tropical Forest Alliance have launched the Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade (FACT) Dialogues project. The aim is to accelerate  transition towards more sustainable land use practices and create ‘new opportunities for investment, jobs and livelihoods in forests, land use and agriculture and to ensure economies have a sustainable relationship with forests’. As part of this, multi-stakeholder consultations involving representatives of all parts of the forest and forest products supply chain are convening to feed their views into government to government  meetings. The tropical forest sector is urging that sustainable forest management and sustainable tropical timber production form part of discussions as vital to ensuring forest maintenance.

Sustainability shapes mill investment

Precious Wood’s construction of a new heavy duty tropical timber mill in Gabon and the feasibility study that preceded it underlines its policy to make most sustainable use of the forest resource.

The company’s Gabonese subsidiary CEB manages 600,000 ha of jointly FSC and PEFC-certified forest concession in the country. It harvests areas on a 25-year cycle, and works zones within designated management regions for five years. A detailed inventory of the latest zone to be harvested, near the town of Okondja, found it to be particularly rich in azobé. A feasibility study followed to assess the volumes of timber, comprising principally the azobé, but also other heavy hardwoods found in the area, that could be extracted sustainably, with only trees over 90cm in diameter felled. From this, Precious Woods decided to go ahead with the new plant on CEB’s Bambidie mill site. “From the technical viewpoint, the new mill can handle other species as well, but for the time being it will mostly process azobé due to the high supply from this area,” said Precious Woods’ forest industries technical consultant Markus Pfannkuch.

In another aspect of the project, the company has formed a partnership with Netherlands based importer, processor and tropical timber construction specialist Wijma. It will take all the timber from new plant, process it and market it Europe-wide. The Dutch business said it was attracted to work with Precious Woods’ by its record on sustainable management. It also advised the latter on the construction of the new mill. The plant has capacity to process 17,000m3, with all output jointly FSC and PEFC-certified, and employs 87 people working two shifts. It also forms part of wider development of the Bambidie site, which includes upgrading kilning and storage and construction of new housing for the additional workforce.

Precious Wood’s also highlights that the ultra-durable timber from the new mill is a renewable, low carbon alternative to concrete and steel in ‘high quality, long lasting applications’. So it will be as sustainable in use as in production.

For the full report on the new mill: www.fair-and-precious.org.

Thémis tool tracks European sustainable timber procurement

Thémis, a new data gathering tool and online portal is being developed to enable various European timber trade federations to monitor, benchmark, communicate and so help increase verified sustainable procurement levels.

The project is being led by Netherlands-based international forest and timber sustainability consultant Probos, which has over a decade’s experience of monitoring and reporting on verified sustainable procurement in the Dutch industry and for the Dutch and Belgian governments. It is working on Thémis with the International Tropical Timber Technical Association (ATIBT) and the trade federations of France, Belgium and the UK; Le Commerce du Bois, Fedustria and the UK Timber Trade Federation. Funding is being provided by IDH – The Sustainable Trade Initiative and the Congo basin Programme for Promotion of Certified Sustainable Forest Management (PPECF), plus the federations themselves. Though the focus of the main donors is on tropical regions, the tool will also cover softwood, temperate hardwoods, panels and some secondary timber products. “Growing the market for responsibly sourced timber”, says Probos Director and Senior Advisor Mark van Benthem, “is key to incentivizing uptake of verified sustainable forest management, in turn supporting maintenance of the forest and its critical climate stabilising role.”

Some European timber trade federations (TTFs) have already implemented responsible timber procurement policies (TPPs) for members. But it’s generally acknowledged that these need to target continued growth in levels of responsible timber purchasing and also that other federations need to follow suit to increase positive impact on the forest. Facilitating sustainable procurement data gathering and monitoring, says Probos, can assist ongoing enhancement of existing TPPs and encourage adoption by organisations which don’t yet have them. “By reporting procurement data, TTF members create transparency and can monitor progress and target interventions,” says Mr van Benthem.

Probos points out that since procurement data monitoring and annual reporting was introduced for members of the Netherlands Timber Trade Federation in 2010, the proportion of their imports backed by verified sustainable forest management chain of custody has risen from 71% to 92% by volume in 2019. Within this figure, the percentage for softwood has risen from 88% to 99%, wood sheet materials 64% to 96% and hardwood 31% to 62%.

It’s difficult to show precise cause and effect between data reporting, setting targets and this growth in sustainable procurement. But Probos maintains that the process can increase companies’ focus on the latter, enable them to compare performance with peers’ or the industry average, identify room for improvement and develop strategies for achieving it. Monitoring responsible sourcing also has added value for those involved, it says.

“Companies get insight into development of this part of their corporate social responsibility performance and how it relates to performance of competitors and the sector as a whole. Where they are performing well, they can communicate the fact and be highlighted as ‘distinguished traders’ on platforms such as www.mytropicaltimber.org,” said Mr van Benthem. “The data also gives TTFs a better view on members’ CSR performance, helps target interventions, distinguishes them from non-TTF members and adds value to membership. If it shows a high percentage of imports coming from well-managed forests, it helps positively brand the sector and timber generally.” He added that governments and donors targeting reduced imported deforestation are also keen to monitor responsibly sourced product consumption.

The data gathering tool is designed to be easy to use and enables companies to detail imports by product type covered by certification schemes, regulatory systems (e.g. FLEGT) and legality verification schemes. Frequency of data gathering and reporting, how the process is audited, and the results analysed, will be down to the TTFs implementing the tool and their members.