Can’t see the forest for the trees?

HBG had to deal wih protesters last September when Greenpeace raided its refurbishment job at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum to protest against the use of wood from South East Asia. The Merbau timber, to be used for flooring, came from rainforests where some species are endangered because of logging.

It was a landmark situation in one sense because, while HBG said it had a certificate of sustainability from the supplier, Greenpeace said the certificate was not proof of true sustainability. In effect Greenpeace was saying that ignorance of proper certification schemes was no excuse. It said it would target 10 other lottery-funded projects to check that the timber used had been harvested legally and sustainably.

So the CIOB’s guide appears not a moment too soon. As well as a short-ish trawl through the issues surrounding the damage logging does to species and habitats around the world, the guide tells how to write a timber procurement policy and discusses certification schemes you can count on.

Certification is a key issue because it amounts to a licence to trade for logging industries around the world. In November the UK government made a number of enemies by listing the certification schemes it judged were both legal and sustainable. Of five studied, only two passed the test, and starting in June central government will have to procure timber certified only by those two schemes.

Those lucky two are the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Canadian Standards Association (CSA).

The study concluded that the other three schemes could only guarantee legality. They are: the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes (PEFC); the North American Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI); and the Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC).