First discussions on global framework for timber legality verification

The need for legality assurance for timber products is growing, and so is the number of verification schemes, to the great confusion of everyone in the marketplace. Should you go for VLO, VLC, LHV, TLTV, VLTV or maybe OLB? – just to mention a few of the programmes offering assurance of timber product legality.

About 35 representatives of organizations engaged in timber legality verification came together at Chatham House in January 2010 to discuss the options for finding common ground. 
 

Confusion about claims

However, the existence of numerous schemes of varying quality and credibility creates confusion in the marketplace, reducing market recognition and penetration for the verified products.

It also creates practical problems for companies trading in the products. For example, currently there is no mutual acceptance among schemes. Trade companies may therefore need to join all the schemes behind the legal verified wood they handle, in order to forward legality claims to their buyers.

And companies are not able to mix products verified to different legality standards.

Quality and credibility also differ widely among the schemes. Some of the schemes are well-established and -documented, while for others it is not even clear which standards are used or how compliance is verified. Despite their differences, all of the schemes have one feature in common: they are not accredited. No third party is checking the performance of the schemes in terms of auditing efficiency or compliance with a set of minimum requirements applicable to all such schemes. This is because a global framework for timber legality verification does not exist.

To explore these issues and their possible solution, leaders of different certification organizations and other key players involved in timber legality verification gathered in London in January. Richard Donovan, Vice President of the Rainforest Alliance, had taken the initiative together with World Resources Institute (WRI), EIA, Tropical Forest Trust (TFT) and Chatham House. The purpose of the meeting was to explore options of a closer cooperation between the actors involved in legal verification.
 

Key issues

Almost all participants supported the idea on harmonization and the establishment of some kind of global framework. Discussions centered on the following issues:

• Governance: The option that was mainly discussed was a voluntary coalition of legality auditing and verification initiatives, with the purpose of developing a common approach for consistency and credibility.
• Standards:A global framework for timber legality standards is needed, including consistent standard development processes as well as a credible and unified approach to stakeholder engagement on standard development.
• Accreditation:To ensure credibility, participants generally agreed that an accreditation system should be established. The feasibility and relative advantage of two models were discussed during the meeting: 1. International accreditation (the FSC model) and 2. Accreditation by national accreditation bodies (the PEFC model).
• Mutual recognition: Timber industry representatives present at the meeting repeatedly stressed that legality systems joining a global framework or coalition should recognize each other. This would be a key benefit of a unified approach to legality verification, from the perspective of traders.
   

The meeting in London showed a clear consensus on the need for addressing these issues, but did not immediately result in a clear road map towards establishing a common framework. The main reason for this is that there are a number of underlying technical issues and discussions on the scope of such a framework that need to be solved.

For example, should a coalition require schemes to include certification according to recognized forestry conformance schemes as the end goal? Some schemes include such a requirement, e.g. the Rainforest Alliance’s verification system implies a clear commitment to work towards FSC certification, using legality verification as a step towards this goal.

Further discussions and compromise solutions will be needed to find the best way forward. As a first step towards clarification, the participants agreed to conduct a survey of the verification organizations’ opinions on key issues.
 

The need for private sector legality schemes

The appearance of private verification systems on the scene has taken place in parallel with the EU FLEGT process, which aims to ensure legal verification of wood from countries with significant levels of illegal harvesting, based on bilateral voluntary partnership agreements (VPAs) between the EU and the producer country. Although the FLEGT process is moving forward, it is not sufficient to ensure the legality of wood products on the EU market in the short or medium term. It has been chronically delayed and until today, 7 years after the program was initiated, not a single piece of wood has been verified under the FLEGT program.

Meanwhile, the need to verify the legality of timber products is becoming more and more urgent, to fulfill market demands driven by procurement policies as well as the US Lacey Act and the plans to implement an EU ‘due diligence’ regulation. The private schemes are the most obvious tools that traders can currently use to meet these demands; in future, such schemes can hopefully operate within a unified global framework providing enhanced consumer recognition and assurance.

The meeting was hosted by Chatham House, the well-known host of regular key international meetings on illegal logging, and publisher of the website www.illegal-logging.info as well as numerous authoritative publications on the issue of illegal timber harvesting and trade.