Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 5 • Number 8 • 29th April 2005
TIMBER CERTIFICATION ON INT’L, BUSINESS, NGO AGENDA
TIMBER CERTIFICATION ON INT’L, BUSINESS, NGO AGENDA
European businesses in a recent statement echoed civil society calls for the EU to introduce legislation to make it illegal to import illegally sourced timber and wood products into the European market. How to use certification schemes to ensure legal imports also continues to feature high on the agenda of the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) which brought together experts to debate the benefits of introducing a ‘phased’ approach to timber certification. While some participants stressed the need to focus on verifying the legality of timber, others fear that an undue emphasis on this aspect will not adequately encourage producers to adopt SFM practices.
Businesses, NGOs call for binding certification to prevent illegal timber imports
Seventy-three companies including Homebase, IKEA and Castorama issued a statement on 29 March calling on the EU to make it "illegal to import all illegally-sourced timber" into the EU. The statement was promoted and publicised by WWF, Greenpeace and the European Union Resource Network (FERN) who signed a similar statement. The businesses say they want to eliminate unfair competition caused by firms who ignore social and environmental standards by importing cheap illegal timber into the EU. "This unfair competition based on widespread illegal practice harms those European companies, particularly small and medium sized businesses, who do behave responsibly and attempt to play by the rules," they noted.
In March 2003, the EU Commission had responded to the growth in imports of illegal timber by adopting an Action Plan for Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT), but are still debating the details of a voluntary certification scheme (see BRIDGES Trade Biores, 21 January 2005). Although the business statement notes industry’s "broad support" for this initiative, it claims that FLEGT’s reliance on voluntary partnership agreements with producer countries will be insufficient to tackle the problem. André de Boer, Director of the Dutch Timber Trade Federation stressed that "without a clear European legal framework, companies that behave responsibly and want to invest in sustainable practices will always be disadvantaged". Instead, both the businesses and civil society are asking the EU to establish a requirement that all timber imported into the area be certified as legally harvested.
G-8 environment and development ministers similarly decided at a March 2005 meeting to support non-binding, voluntary measures to discourage the trade in illegal timber (see BRIDGES Trade BioRes, 1 April 2005).
ITTO workshop debates ‘phased’ certification
Participants at the ITTO workshop on phased approaches to certification, held from 19-21 April in Bern, Switzerland, were divided over the relative importance of ensuring the legality of certified timber. In order to encourage producers to move towards more comprehensive and effective forestry management, they considered a so-called ‘phased approach’ in which full certification would remain the goal but companies and other forest owners would be able to achieve market recognition and benefits as they improve their forest management practices and move towards full certification. For example, the first stage could include a baseline requirement for basic certification, and successive stages could involve increased implementation of SFM practices that would in turn be verified and recognised by the certifier.
Although all participants agreed that the verification of legal origin could constitute part of the first stage of a phased approach, some participants emphasised the need for a more extensive verification of legal compliance. This would require that certified producers be subject to an extensive in-depth audit of their adherence to domestic laws relating to forestry and sustainable development. Other participants said that this approach might, in fact, hinder efforts to ensure SFM because it would increase the costs and procedural burden on producers wanting to get certification. According to ITTO’s Amha bin Buang, such a specific criterion of compliance risks shifting the certification focus away from a "holistic" conception of SFM and towards assurances of legality. "What tropical timber-producers need most of all is certainty", he noted. "Many have made significant strides in improving their forest management and to make new demands on them now could force some out of the market."
Forest certification is a means of verifying whether a particular forest area is well managed and, through labelling, of assuring consumers that in purchasing labelled timber products they are supporting sustainable forest management. Although the idea has been around for over ten years, only five percent of currently certified forest area is currently in the tropical areas from which most developing countries export timber as a result of a lack of emphasis, priority and capacity to certify in these areas.Background
The ITTO is an intergovernmental organisation promoting the conservation and sustainable management, use and trade of tropical forest resources. Its 59 members represent about 80 percent of the world’s tropical forests and 90 percent of the global tropical timber trade. The ITTO was established by the International Tropical Timber Agreement, which was adopted in 1983 and entered into force in 1985. The ITTA is a commodity agreement set up in response to growing concerns over the future of tropical forests, explicitly recognises the need to balance conservation and sustainable use of tropical forests. The ITTA was revised in 1994 to include broader provisions for information sharing, including non-tropical timber trade data, and greater consideration of non-tropical timber issues as they relate to tropical timber and is currently being renegotiated (see BRIDGES Trade Biores, 4 March 2005).
Additional Resources
"Report On The Procedures For The Implementation Of Phased Approaches To Certification In Tropical Timber Producing Countries," ITTO document
The EU timber industry statement.
ICTSD Reporting; "Legality Shapes As New Certification Flash-Point," ITTO PRESS RELEASE, 25 April 2005; "Common European Rules For Fair Competition And Sustainable Markets", FLEGT INDUSTRY STATEMENT, March 2005; "Industry And NGOs Urge EU To Ban Illegal Timber", WWF/GREENPEACE PRESS RELEASE, 7 April 2005