Project objective
The Danish parliament made a decision in 2001 to ensure that public procurement of tropical timber should only include timber from legal and sustainably managed sources. The aim of this project was therefore to elaborate guidelines for public procurers to help them identify timber from legal and sustainably managed forests.
Project approach
Preferred by Nature (formerly known as NEPCon) provided technical inputs to the guidelines and the political process including the elaboration of background reports regarding:
- Sustainable forest management, with emphasis on global and regional processes elaborating criteria and indicators
- Guidelines for assessing forest certification schemes
- Assessment of existing forest certification schemes
- Market Analysis for tropical timber in Denmark
Results and impact
The project recognized the difficulty of obtaining sufficient amount of tropical timber with reliable documentation of legality and sustainability. The overall conclusion of the project was that the best way to obtain legally and sustainably produced tropical timber is to buy FSC certified wood products.
The background report offered an evaluation of present certification schemes, tropical tree species and their qualities, and legal and sustainable forest management. Please find more details as well as the resulting guidelines here.