There’s growing recognition of the urgency of accelerating uptake of sustainable forest management (SFM), especially in the tropics. Global warming and environmental degradation are constant topics in the media and loss of tropical forest and its invaluable climate and wider environmental benefits is a core theme of coverage.
Timber and forestry industries in turn recognise ever more clearly their responsibility to maintain forest cover as a vital resource for mitigating climate change, sustaining biodiversity and livelihoods, as well as a source of renewable, low carbon construction and manufacturing material. Consequently, there are numerous strategies and initiatives to drive SFM and the sectors’ wider environmental performance. The focus of the Sustainable Tropical Timber Coalition (STTC) conference in Berlin on November 20 was how varied approaches could be aligned to achieve shared goals.
Titled ‘Exploring pathways to verified sustainable tropical timber’, the event highlighted broad consensus on the need for the timber industry to collaborate on environmental issues. Perhaps inevitably, it also underlined some differences of opinion on the way forward, notably around the respective roles and value of the EU Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade Voluntary Partnership Agreement (FLEGT VPA) legality assurance programme and thirdparty certification.
STTC conferences have established a reputation as trade forums. Delegate discussion and input are as key an element as presentations. That was maintained by this year’s event, which attracted approximately 120 delegates from across Europe and beyond and was co-hosted by STTC-founder IDH-the sustainable trade initiative, German Timber Trade Federation GD Holz and STTC-member the City of Berlin and organised by Probos.
Speakers addressed a range of subjects, including an update on the European market for verified sustainable tropical timber, tropical timber promotion and various legality and sustainability verification approaches and their potential co-ordination. These provided a stepping off point for debate and questions, energised by dynamic moderator Peter Woodward.
There was also a rolling programme of Conversation sessions. Experts in their field gave concise overviews of specific topics as an introduction to delegate discussion and exchange; from the impact of certification on landscapes in Indonesia and Peru, to timber tracking tools, FLEGT outcomes in producer countries and market trends from the perspective of a concession holder and trader.
GD Holz chief executive and European Timber Trade Federation secretary-general Thomas Goebel opened by stressing the need for the timber sector to take a joined-up approach on sustainability. “At the recent ITTO and ATIBT Shanghai conference, Together Towards Global Green Supply Chains, speakers addressed pathways to tropical timber sustainability and the outlook was positive,” he said. “But there are important areas where we need progress. These include improving tropical suppliers’ corruption perceptions index ratings. The ETTF would also like to see the EU FLEGT process accelerate and more supplier countries achieve FLEGT licensing stage.”
IDH programme manager Nienke Sleurink said the STTC aimed to facilitate a cohesive industry-wide approach to grow the sustainable tropical timber market. “Its website pools and shares useful tools, data and common messaging,” she said.
In the conference section headlined ‘Highlighting the stepwise approach towards sustainable’, IDH and STTC unveiled their new report, Unlocking Sustainable Tropical Timber Market Growth through Data. Co-authored by forest and timber sustainability advisers Probos and the Global Timber Forum, the report’s rationale, said Probos’s Mark van Benthem, is that accurate data is key to informing market development strategies. Its calculations are based on the “exposure to certification method”, taking the area of certified forest in a country as a guide to the percentage of its certified exports to specific markets. This reveals wide variation in market share of verified sustainable tropical timber imports between Europe’s seven leading consuming countries; from 67.5% in the Netherlands, to 5% in Spain. The average is 28.5%, rising to 40% when Indonesian FLEGT-licensed timber is taken into account.
“We also calculate that, if these seven countries sourced 100% verified sustainable primary tropical timber products, it could positively impact 16 million ha of semi- and natural tropical forests, in terms of SFM implementation,” said Mr van Benthem, adding that the report identifies potential linkages between FLEGT and certification, with the former acting as a “stepping stone to sustainability”.
It concludes by recommending NGOs, the European timber trade, end-users and governments work together to increase use of sustainable tropical timber and incentivise SFM uptake. “Through intensified European ambition and joint public-private actions, we can protect tropical forests,” it says.
Ms Sleurink focused on co-ordination on sustainability across wider forest products supply chains, looking at the Produce, Conserve, Include initiative and implementation of Verified Sourcing Areas (VSA) in the state of Mato Grosso, the powerhouse of Brazilian soy, beef and timber production. “The PCI initiative involves broad stakeholder participation and combines forest protection with support for agriculture, for instance by restoring degraded farmland,” said Ms Sleurink.
She added that pilot studies for beef production had been carried out under the VSA programme and were now being evaluated for timber.
Ms Sleurink also addressed benchmarking of the Brazilian Sisflora legality and sustainability scheme with the requirements of the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR), FSC and PEFC. This showed it is satisfying many of their criteria.
The theme from David Hopkins, UK Timber Trade Federation managing director was FLEGT and Certification – Achieving Mutual Benefit. He said that, with currently just 6.5% of tropical forest certified, complementary initiatives were needed to accelerate progress towards verified legal and sustainable forest management. FLEGT could be among them, with its VPA scheme for suppliers meeting many of the criteria of certification.
“FLEGT involves permanent political and legal structural reform, so has a permanence voluntary certification lacks. It also covers entire countries, raising the baseline for all, on top of which you can add certification,” he said. “The key is to get everybody on board the bus for sustainability. We can then improve the bus as we go along.”
Jesse Kuijper of the Borneo Initiative took a different view. He maintained that certification, notably FSC, remained the prime engine for driving timber and forest sustainability. “The only bus has already left, and it’s the FSC,” he said. “The mandatory approach of FLEGT fails to take into account such aspects as high conservation forests and flora and fauna protection like FSC and it’s forcing some companies to leave the forest.”
He added that the multi-stakeholder approach of the Borneo Initiative had helped increase FSC certification and controlled wood standard forest coverage in Indonesia to 3 million ha and 2 million ha respectively. The aim was to increase both to 8 million ha by 2030.
In its efforts to grow use of sustainable timber through its procurement policy, Wilhelm Unnerstall for Berlin, said the city had combined ambition with pragmatism. It had introduced regulation stipulating timber in public projects must be certified under the FSC or PEFC schemes, or their equivalent. “At the same time we worked closely with industry; the certification requirement is for projects of €2,000 and above and if contractors are not certified, they can provide proof of sustainability per project,” he said. “We also encourage dialogue between different actors to promote development of a long-term co-operative network.”
Co-operation was also key to timber sustainability efforts in the Netherlands, said Eric de Munck of timber market development body Centrum Hout and the Netherlands Timber Trade Association. The country’s Green Deal initiative had brought together timber suppliers, users, retailers and other stakeholders to make “sustainable timber the market norm”. More recently, the Hout in de GWW campaign had involved 12 NTTA members in a project to increase use of tropical timber in civil engineering, targeting engineers with promotion, educational materials and LCA studies comparing tropical timber performance versus alternative materials. Dutch initiatives also include a blueprint for a “circular biological highway”, where lamp posts, noise barriers and other motorway fixtures are made in wood to reduce carbon impacts.
Mr van Benthem also presented a recent Probos survey of leading European importers to gauge their views on promoting sustainable tropical timber procurement.
Conclusions included that a tailored promotion approach was needed in each country. The price differential between certified and uncertified needed tackling too, but the onus was also on the trade to “take responsibility and insist wood comes from sustainably managed forest”.
Meteorologist Reinier van den Berg of Meteo Group further underlined the urgency of maintaining the tropical forest and its critical role in climate change mitigation through sustainable management. The clock could be turned back, he said, but, in terms of achieving international targets on limiting global warming, it already stood at five past midnight.
Ms Sleurink concluded that the tropical timber sector could rise to the challenges of achieving sustainability. “But we only make the task more complex by sending out divided messages,” she said. “Let’s make life easier by collaborating.”
