UK timber tracking technology supplier Helveta has been selected by Cameroon to provide a national wood tracking system in support of the country’s Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) under the EU’s Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade initiative.
A consortium, also comprising Société Générale de Surveillance SA, will start with trials in several timber supply chains throughout Cameroon, with national deployment expected in 2011.
Helveta’s CI World technology will be used to map the location of individual standing trees and track the wood products derived from them through the supply chain.
About 80% of Cameroon’s sawn timber output is exported to the EU.
Ghana, the first country to have signed a VPA, had already chosen CI World for its own national wood tracking system.
CI World is also being used to monitor more than 2.7 million ha of forest across the Congo and Amazon basins, as well as in South-east Asia.
