“How do you see the future for timber tracking tools in support of implementation of legislations to fight illegal logging? What do you expect from the Global Timber Tracking Network and its future development? What is the work portfolio of the German Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food in the context of forest legality?”
Thorsten Hinrichs from the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) answered these questions as a GTTN testimonial and representative of the German Ministry of Food and Agriculture BMEL, the donor of the Global Timber Tracking Network. He works on the political level, supervising the competent authorities for controls of the European Timber Regulation and FLEGT, overviewing the cooperation with the commission and other member states as well as facilitating a unified implementation on the European level.
For Hinrichs, the most important feature of the Global Timber Tracking Network is its potential to bring all stakeholders behind tracking and identification technologies together and to cooperate and to combine efforts. “Because, new identification methods are crucial for controls and the due diligence mechanism”, so Hinrichs.
Check out the interview for more details.