Summary
• The GFTN was established in 1991.
• It now has nearly 300 participants.
• It is active in 32 countries including Russia, China and Indonesia.
• It has played a pivotal role in the development of FSC certification.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Global Forest and Trade Network (GFTN), WWF´s initiative to transform the global forest market place into a force for saving the world’s valuable and threatened forests, ensuring they continue to provide economic and social benefits.
But 20 years ago no market existed for environmentally and socially responsible forest products. Concepts such as traceability, verification, chain of custody and due diligence were largely considered mere theory. In defining and implementing these concepts together with companies, governments and other NGOs, GFTN has helped to transform the marketplace into one that values environmental and social responsibility.
In the early 1990s, WWF found itself involved in a debate with 20 major UK companies facing questions regarding their connections to global forests, widespread deforestation and forest management. There was a complex set of interrelated issues for which no one was taking responsibility.
Government needed willing industries, NGOs wanted influence to achieve change, industry looked for answers that made commercial sense and forest communities were largely ignored.
WWF recognised that this was not just a forest issue – it also reached far beyond forests into the global marketplace. Companies began to commit to responsible trade and to help generate demand for Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification by the time it emerged in 1993. The small but visionary group became a network in 1999 under a single name: Global Forest & Trade Network.
Since then, GFTN has worked with and influenced more than 1,000 companies and has nearly 300 participants who are all fully committed to credible certification and responsible procurement policies. Today, 200 buyers and 100 producers in 32 countries collectively trade about 19% of global forest trade by value and manage 27 million ha progressing towards or maintaining certification in places that matter.
Through its Stepwise Approach to certification, GFTN has helped companies to assess risks, develop and implement responsible procurement policies, support suppliers, understand compliance and facilitate trade relations with other GFTN participants.
At its core, the GFTN was created as a market-based mechanism to protect “at-risk” forests and endangered species – placessuch as the Congo and Amazon basins, and the rapidly disappearing forests of South-eastAsia and Siberia. Marked by high rates ofland conversion and deforestation, illegal logging, poverty, social inequality, corruption and poor governance, these are placeswhere implementing certification can be extremely difficult.
GFTN has played a pivotal role in enabling the uptake of FSC certification everywhere, in both developing and developed countries. In the Congo basin, GFTN participants have achieved FSC certification of more than 1.7 million ha, essential habitat for western lowland gorillas. In Russia, nearly one-quarter of all commercial forests are now FSC-certified. GFTN-Russia participants manage 15.9 million ha – more than 80% of the total amount.
Too often GFTN participants have been forced to compete on an uneven playing field against less scrupulous operators such as those logging illegally. But legality is quickly becoming the new baseline for timber products in many of the world’s major markets.
As leading buyers and consumers of timber and fibre, GFTN believes governments are key to driving improvements in forest manage-ment. GFTN has been actively supporting governments in the development of new measures such as the Lacey Act Amendment in 2008, that gave the US government the authority to fine, even jail individuals and companies that traffic in illegally harvested wood in or into the US, or in 2010, when the European Union followed suit with a regulation to be implemented in 2013 banning illegal timber from entering the EU market.
The original stimulus for WWF to engage with the forest industry was concern over poor forest management, deforestation, illegal logging and trade and, at that time, some concerns about greenhouse gases.
GFTN’s challenge for the next decade is to ensure that responsible forest management and trade become mainstream practices among all forest-related sectors. GFTN calls upon its partners and forest industries to redouble efforts and spread responsible forest management and trade around the world.
