I’m writing to clarify some apparent misunderstandings around The Forest Trust’s (TFT) work to get wood products legally verified and sustainably certified.

The misunderstandings surround our Timber Trade Action Plan (TTAP) project. Since 2005, TFT has implemented this project in partnership with the UK, Dutch, Belgian and French timber trades federations. TTAP makes EC funds available to TFT to support our work with TFT members and members of our partner trade federations to get their products legally verified. We work in forests and factories in 10 producer countries in Central Africa, South-east Asia, China and Latin America. We’re very proud of the project’s significant achievements and have 25 staff working around the world with our TTF partners, their factories and the forests that supply them. The project has a further two years to run and we expect that by the end of it, we will have impacted many billions of pounds’ worth of trade.

TTAP is not a certification scheme, it’s a technical assistance project so there is no such thing as TTAP-certified product. Also, companies can and do choose to work with TFT to get their products legally verified outside of the TTAP project. Both approaches pursue the same important goal – legally-verified products – and both approaches work with TFT staff through essentially the same approach. The only difference is that companies working with us on the TTAP project have EC funding support whereas the companies that work with us outside it do not.

An example of this is RKL Plywood which is not working with TFT under the banner of the TTAP project (TTJ October 31/November 7). Rather, RKL has contracted TFT to advise it on getting its supplying factories in China legally verified.

All our TFT clients – be they engaged with the TTAP project or working outside of TTAP – can set themselves apart from the rest of the industry but only by demonstrating real achievement of their environmental goals; that is by bringing legally-verified and sustainably-certified product to market. Until the goal is reached, we’d prefer to see less marketing of their partnership and a stronger transparency in communicating what is happening in the field.

Scott Poynton
The Forest Trust
Executive director