Just how much of the wood traded internationally derives from legal and sustainable sources is a question frequently asked by both timber buyers and policy-makers in the EU.
The question has become particularly relevant now that the EU Timber Regulation obliges all importers to demonstrate that there is a negligible risk of any illegal wood entering their supply chains. Unfortunately there is not a simple answer to this question.
According to ITTO, one issue is how to define terms like "negligible risk” and “sustainably" sourced. There are large areas of forest around the world where there is very little risk of illegal harvest and that would be considered "sustainable" against most measures, but are not independently verified or certified. This is particularly true of forests owned and managed by communities or private non-industrial forest owners.
Another issue is that certification systems do not measure the volume of trade in certified products. Typically they only monitor the area of certified forest and the numbers of chain of custody certificates issued.
Nevertheless, efforts have being made to overcome these problems. In 2012, Forest Industries Intelligence (FII) Ltd, a UK-based company, devised a procedure to estimate "level of exposure to 3rd party verified/certified wood".
This formed part of a project joint funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the EU Timber Trade Action Plan, and European Timber Trade Federation (ETTF).
That 2012 assessment has now been updated by the ITTO Independent Market Monitoring (IMM) Project which is monitoring the market impact of the FLEGT Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs).
The ‘level of exposure’ is a rough measure to identify gaps in forest coverage of independent certification and legality verification systems. It is based on the percentage area of certified or legally verified commercial forest area in each individual supplier country.
For example, if 40% of its forest area is known to be independently certified or legally verified, the level of exposure of a country’s wood production and exports is also assumed to be 40%.
The certified/verified forest areas are calculated by comparing data from the various certification and verification systems with UN FAO figures for areas of productive forest land.
‘Level of exposure’ data can be broken down by verification system, including FSC, PEFC, or operatorbased systems of legality verification (such as SGS TLTV, Smartwood VLO, or OLB). For this assessment, wood from countries covered by FSC-endorsed National Controlled Wood Risk Assessment is also considered ‘3rd party verified’.
To avoid double counting, areas dual certified to FSC and PEFC are accounted separately. Adjustments are also made for a few countries, such as Brazil and the USA, where there is a big difference in the level of certification in hardwood and softwood forests.
The new assessment indicates that in 2014, around 80% of internal EU trade in timber products (including all wood, wood furniture, pulp and paper) was “exposed” to some form of certification or legality verification. This is simply due to the fact that a very large proportion of forest area within the EU is either certified or assessed to be low risk of illegal harvest in an FSC national controlled wood assessment.
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