The PEFC leaders’ summit, recently held in London, encouraged consumers to buy day‐to‐day products carrying the PEFC ‘two trees’ label.
The summit discussed the challenges and possible solutions to safeguarding the world’s forests and improving the livelihoods of the people dependent on them.
It emphasised that well‐managed forests are vital for promoting and safeguarding rural livelihoods.
More than 260 million hectares of forests worldwide are verified as being sustainably managed.
Ben Gunneberg, chief executive of PEFC International, said there was increasing interest in the organisation’s work in Asia, with China, Indonesia and Malaysia obtaining PEFC recognition in the past few years.
“This has been acting as a catalyst to inspire other countries in the region, such as India, Japan, Nepal, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam, to follow their example of promoting sustainable forest management and PEFC certification. We are about to make great strides in Africa in the Congo Basin were we expect to see the first certifications shortly.”
In the UK, there is a growing focus on homegrown material which is expected to enter the supply chain to fuel products such as new innovative engineered material and the biomass sector.
PEFC UK has launched a new online forest certification system designed to help increase the UK’s certified forest area and boost the supply of certified material to the UK primary processing sector and its customers.
The system will act as an aid to group certification managers, to enable these schemes to functfion more efficiently, reduce costs and become a user-friendly means of assessing the compatibility of existing forest management plans, using a series of easy to follow online checklists.
Alun Watkins, PEFC UK manager, said: “It is really important that forest owners of all sizes seek to become certified as the market is now demanding responsible sourcing as the norm. Our new online tool assists with reducing the cumbersome paperwork generated by the sustainable forest management process and is designed to be user-friendly and provide an easy path for those seeking to become PEFC-certified.”
More than one million hectares of UK forests have been certified to PEFC’s sustainable forest management standard since 2010.
