The Grand Locarno Room at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has seen its fair share of significant events – for a start its name derives from being the venue for the ratification of the 1925 Locarno Treaty, which was meant to set the seal on European peace after the first world war.

In December it played host to another noteworthy event uniting previously warring factions – the first conference of the UK Forest Partnership for Action (UKFPA), a body comprising UK forest and timber businesses, environmental groups and the government, which promotes sustainable development in the sector at home and abroad.

The conference, entitled “Responsible timber purchasing: are you buying legal and sustainable timber?” attracted more than 100 delegates from public and private procurement officials to housebuilders, NGOs and timber research and development organisations.

Outlining the government’s position, keynote speaker Bill Rammell MP, parliamentary under-secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs with responsibility for the environment, said there was a “general acceptance” of the problem of illegal logging around the world, causing environmental degradation, creating human rights issues and costing governments huge sums in lost tax revenues. And, he said, “there is growing awareness of the role money generated from the exploitation of natural resources can play in fuelling conflict in failing states”.

“The UK was the first country to adopt a procurement policy for its government’s own timber requirements,” said Mr Rammell. “We want to show the rest of the world that demanding timber from legal and sustainable sources will help transform the supply market and have a catalytic effect on consumers generally.”

Objective guidance

As an example of the government’s commitment, Mr Rammell described the activities of the nascent Central Point of Expertise for Timber set up by DEFRA to provide objective (it will operate outside government) guidance on suppliers’ claims for the sources of their timber.

DEFRA’s Bob Andrew traced the progress of the CPET to date. The aim of government is to seek assurance from its suppliers that their products are, as an absolute minimum, from legal sources and, as a preference, from well-managed sources too. The CPET’s first task, therefore, will be to review the definitions of “legal” and “sustainable”. It will then assess certification bodies’ schemes against those required by government contracts – as opposed to against each other – and publish guidance on a website.

Another of DEFRA’s recommendations, said Mr Andrew, is that a “stepwise” or “variant standard” approach to procurement is established, enabling the government to work with developing producer countries and not deny them access to market. Again, the minimum requirement is that the timber is from legal sources, but tenderers are invited to offer the higher standard of sustainable timber, for which the government will show preference. “We also anticipate a ‘medium standard’ where a country is progressing towards sustainability,” said Mr Andrew. “This leaves the door open for companies and countries working towards sustainability and creates a commercial incentive for suppliers to offer sustainable timber.”

This pragmatic approach to responsible procurement also has the advantage of creating a more certain supply of timber.

Defining legality

Anthea Carter, a senior consultant at Environmental Resources Management (ERM), led the study for DEFRA on timber procurement and tackled the thorny issue of defining “legality”. It could, she said, be defined as “timber harvested, transported, processed, bought or sold in accordance with national laws”. However, she added, in practice there are differing standards of legality both between countries and within a single country and these are only as good as the national laws to which they refer.

“In an ideal situation,” said Ms Carter, “we would have an agreed working definition per country with maximum stakeholder buy-in as a pre-condition of success.” Other pre-conditions, she said, were transparency, the availability of time and money and “significant pressure for a result”.

Setting out the UK’s own forest sector sustainability strategy, the conclusion of Peter Wilson, executive director of the Forest Industries Development Council (FIDC), was that timber could be bought “with a clear conscience – but you have to take care”.

Prior to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, the FIDC created a task group representing all parts of the sector. Following wide consultation and “unprecedented co-operation” its UK Forest Industries Sector Sustainability Strategy is now set for launch on February 12.

“Our strategy is the start of a process, not an end in itself,” said Mr Wilson. “It recognises the importance of responsible timber procurement, has a strong commitment to manage UK forests sustainably and to import legal and sustainable timber and it contains specific targets for sustainable supply.”

By the FIDC’s own admission those targets are ambitious. By 2007 it wants to see the certified area within the UK rise from 40% to 60% and UK certified production rise from 60% to 80%. It is also calling for the proportion of certified timber in the UK market place to reach 60% and for the number of TTF companies signed up to a formal timber sourcing policy to increase from 25% to 75%.

Other speakers, drawn from the full length of the supply chain, outlined how their companies were meeting customers’ demands.

“Customer trust is really important to us,” said B&Q‘s social responsibility manager Hilary Thompson. As a result, 95% of B&Q’s timber products are independently certified as from well-managed sources, while the remaining 5% are “in progress”.

“There are key business reasons for doing this,” said Ms Thompson. “By conducting business responsibly, we secure sustainable sources [for the group], protect the brand and reputation of B&Q and acknowledge and address the issue of NGO and media pressure.”

Certification goal

Twenty per cent of Travis Perkins plc’s annual £1.4bn sales are timber and forest products and, said group planning director Ian Goldsmith, its goal is to have two-thirds of those products certified by 2006.

The company’s timber procurement policy also adopts the “stepwise” approach, starting with “known” sources at the bottom of the ladder and moving up through “legal”, “responsible”, “transition”, to “certified” at the top. It then requires its suppliers to move continuously up this ladder.

“It is much better to support the type of supplier who is prepared to make improvements – ie gradual steps up the staircase within a time frame – rather than abandon them,” said Dr Goldsmith.

For those suppliers who seek to make improvements but don’t know how, help is at hand, as delegates heard from two speakers, Scott Poynton, executive director of the Tropical Forest Trust (TFT), and Ruth Nussbaum, co-founder and director of ProForest.

The TFT has been working with B&Q, notably on its procurement of yellow balau (most of which comes from Indonesia) for garden furniture. B&Q assessed its requirements; the TFT found forests that would commit to work towards FSC standards and helped them draw up the necessary action plans. B&Q’s undertaking was that its vendors would buy the timber.

“B&Q prioritises FSC-certified wood products but recognises that it can have a positive impact by ‘pulling’ forest management toward FSC,” said Mr Poynton. “So B&Q also accepts wood from non-FSC forests supported by TFT.”

“From the producer’s perspective it’s hard work,” said Mr Poynton, “but the clever ones recognise there’s a new wind blowing. If they implement a wood control system and move toward FSC there are real dollar benefits to be had.”

ProForest is a small, not-for-profit company, which helps businesses, NGOs and governments with policy implementation. It also advocates the phased approach to sustainable sourcing. “Most people now accept that it’s not possible to do everything at once and a stepwise approach establishes a realistic pathway from where you are to where you want to be,” said Dr Nussbaum. “It needs to be realistic, but it also needs to be appropriate to your way of doing business.”

“Improving forest management is one of the major changes in recent years and the realisation has grown that forest managers can be helped back on the ground. It’s important that people in the procurement chain support that process.”