At a seminar organised by the American Hardwood Export Council and International Tropical Technical Association (ATIBT) at the Carrefour International du Bois, the US hardwood sector and tropical producers presented contrasting proposed routes to demonstrate timber’s deforestation-free status. The backdrop to the event was the implementation, set for the end of this year, of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).

The EUDR replaces the legality focused EU Timber Regulation. It requires that all operators and large traders placing timber and wood products (plus six other ‘forest and ecosystem risk commodities’) on the EU market, or exporting them from the EU, must undertake due diligence to show they’re not just legal, but not implicated in deforestation or forest degradation. EU operators and large traders must also provide geolocation coordinates for the plot of land where commodities originated.

At the seminar, AHEC environmental policy director Rupert Oliver underlined the task facing US hardwood sector in terms of providing geolocation information given the fragmented nature of forest ownership in the country - including 9.5 million private, often family and largely small-scale holdings. With mills sourcing from a constantly shifting supply base of small forest plots, often harvested once a generation, he said, US hardwood mills not only faced providing multiple geolocation coordinates for timber these would be different from consignment to consignment.

Some, including the tropical suppliers speaking at the seminar, are looking to third-party certification as a risk mitigation tool under the EUDR. While stressing that certification alone would not provide a ‘green lane’ through the Regulation, Mr Oliver also said it was not a significant option in the US where there is negligible take-up by private non-industrial forest owners.

Consequently, AHEC has focused on developing a bespoke system to assure global markets that US hardwood is sourced legally and only from forest land where there is a negligible risk of conversion to agriculture.

One of the pillars of the system, which is being created with government support, is ‘high resolution’ legality risk assessment of the 33 principal hardwood forest states. This will combine with provision of geolocation coordinates for every county within those states, with the AHEC system capable of overlaying satellite data to monitor forest disturbances on to the uniquely detailed land ownership mapping available in the US. And it was highlighted that the average area of US counties is less than that of a typical tropical forest concession, which can count as a ‘single plot’ under the EUDR. The monitoring process will use AI to assess likelihood of any forest disturbance being followed by conversion to agriculture to quantify deforestation risk per county. AHEC plans to link the satellite assessment, using Sentinel imaging, with new scientific techniques to identify wood product provenance.

The seminar speakers from the tropical sector were operating in a very different context. They represented companies with large forest concessions in Africa, each of which, as previously mentioned, can be presented as a single ‘plot of land’ under the terms of the EUDR. That hugely simplified provision of geolocation data. In addition, they said, they were relying for compliance on their own traceability systems, plus FSC and PAFC/PEFC certification schemes, which the latter organisations say are now in the process of ‘aligning’ with the Regulation.

Vincent Istace, CSR head of Olam Agri, parent of Republic of the Congo-based CIB looked at the forest management record of the Congo Basin more widely. Supported by the ATIBT, he said, there was cooperation across the region to drive sustainable management practices – and to meet the requirements of the EUDR. The rate of deforestation is now less than 1% a year – lower than current levels in parts of South East Asia and South America, he said.

CIB itself, he added, manages around 1.8 million ha of FSC-certified concessions. We operate a cutting cycle of one tree per hectare every 30 years, he said. And our certified management process includes social aspects and habitat and wildlife protections. In addition, we have a major planting programme.

CIB was also confident its traceability systems would help meet EUDR requirements. Using identification numbers for each tree, we can track timber from stump through processing, he said.

Emmanuel Bon, general director of Cameroon-based Alpicam, also maintained his company could meet EUDR demands through the combination of FSC sustainable forest management certification, which it achieved in 2023, and its own tracking and forest inventory systems. He said geolocalised data for cutting areas was already recorded as a matter of course. Cutting area details are also uploaded into the Cameroon government operated SIGIF 2 system which allows tracking of timber ‘from the cut to the port of shipment’.