European Sustainable Tropical Timber Coalition (STTC) recently released a report stating that if seven European leading tropical timber-importing countries committed to 100% sustainable sourcing of primary tropical timber products, it would encourage sound forest stewardship of over 5 million hectares of tropical forest.
How Sustainable are Europe’s Tropical Timber Imports? identified trends in the trade of tropical timber on the EU market, and explored how an EU commitment to 100% verified sustainable tropical timber can contribute to deforestation-free supply chains and help meet climate change mitigation targets. Just 30% of tropical timber products on the EU market are estimated to be verified sustainable.
Six out of the seven main tropical timber importing countries have signed the Amsterdam Declaration, committing to sustainable sourcing of ‘deforestation commodities’.
This report was written by experts from the Probos institute for forestry, forest products and services, and edited by the Sustainable Trade Initiative.
The subject of using data to grow the market for verified sustainable timber uptake will be discussed at the 5th annual European STTC conference ‘Using data to drive market share’ in Paris on 25 October 2018
