DEFRA announces review to assure legal and sustainable timber procurement

A review of five forest certification schemes will begin on 24 June

to ensure that the schemes are providing adequate assurances that timber bought by the UK Government is legally and sustainably sourced, in line with UK Government policy on timber procurement. Interested parties are invited to submit comments and evidence to the Central Point of Expertise on Timber (CPET) before 24 June.

The review will examine and assess each scheme's own published requirements and whether they are actually being applied but it will not look at the resulting impact on the forests and related ecosystems from which timber is sourced - that is done independently by accredited certification bodies. All schemes will be reviewed against the Criteria for Evaluating Certification Schemes, published in May 2006.

There are currently four schemes that the UK Government accepts as providing adequate assurance of legal and sustainable timber sources. These are: Canadian Standards Association (CSA), Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). The Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC) assures only that timber supplies are legal.

These documents and further details can be found on the CPET website at www.proforest.net/cpet. Comments on the schemes to be assessed are invited from interested parties via email to cpet@proforest.net by 24 June 2006. Only comments pertinent to the scope of the assessments, i.e. the compliance of the scheme's documented systems with the CPET assessment criteria, can be considered during the review.