Tropical treasury: lesser known species

FSC General Assembly 2011

All wood is valuable if it exists in abundance” , states Robert Simeone, President of Sylvania Forestry and founding member of FSC. We caught him in the midst of the busy goings-on of the FSC General Assembly to talk about the need for propagation of Lesser Known Species.

According to Robert Simeone, reognising the value of ´lesser known species’ is an important part of the package of developing sustainable forestry in the tropics. As such, it is also highly important for building sustainable community forestry.

In the mid-1980s, Mr. Simeone worked with the Yanesa people organised in the cooperative COFYAL. This cooperative was behind the first-ever shipment of socially responsible timber to Europe; incidentally, the buyer was Hubert Kwisthout , who later on was to play an instrumental part in the formation of FSC.
Community forest business – the challenge

Mr. Simeone: “The early attempts at creating a market for sustainable tropical timber often failed. There are many inherent problems surrounding attempts to build up business for forest communities, including their cultural values which make the people share everything they’ve got; this means they have difficulties managing capital”.

According to Mr. Simeone, the way forward for tropical community forestry is either to focus on low-technology, handmade products that fetch a good price on the high-end market – or to team up with local industries, rather than investing and running advanced wood industries themselves. Coming into the basket is another very important aspect: Proper use of the timber resources available to the community.
The variety of wood – an untapped resource

“Typically, the most abundant tree species in a given tropical forest area are not well-known in the timber trade. Most logging companies are focusing only on the common timber trade names that are in the demand in the existing market”.

“This is reflected even in how forest inventories take stock of forest resources list them by current market demands. Our inventories always list the species by their abundance. I believe that the biggest value is contained in the top 10 most abundant species. There are many prejudices in the marketplace about the least known timber species, but it is all about determining the right uses for the right species. My contention is that all wood is valuable if it exists in abundance”.

How to sell a product with no market

“It takes years to develop the market for a new timber species, and it takes buyers who are looking for responsible timber”, says Mr. Simeone. “Mid-1990s we liaised with Tarkett of Sweden. At that time, Tarkett was moving away from Merbau and they were among the world’s first companies to establish an FSC-only policy. They were looking for alternatives and WWF-Sweden made that market linkage”.

“As a dendrologist, I am fascinated by the incredible diversity of wood. This all began when I ran into Alan Knight, then of the B&Q, and showed him a beautiful piece of wood. He said, ‘don’t show me the wood – show me a final product that I can buy! Make me a bench or something’. That was an eye-opener for me. Product development is very important. You have to match every type of wood to products”.
The next difference that FSC can make

“FSC could play an important role in building the market for timber species that are not common in timber trade”, says Mr. Simeone. “As a proponent of sustainable forestry, FSC has a role to play in developing the market for the vast resource of little known timber species that occur in great abundance. FSC could create much more awareness of the importance and value of lesser known species”.

Mr. Simeone is one of very few people who attended the first FSC General Assembly and has not missed a single GA since then.