Traceability & Transparency
Procurement Options
Resources
Project Phases

A foundational element of projects’ traceability and transparency objectives must be avoiding wood from unacceptable sources.

These include:

  • Illegal logging: The risk of illegal logging in North America is widely considered to be low, however.
  • Conversion of forests to plantations or non-forest uses: Deforestation is not just a phenomenon in far-off lands. Across the US and Canada, natural forests are being converted to monoculture tree farms and large areas of forestland are lost to agricultural conversion and sprawl each year.
  • Destruction or significant degradation of High Conservation Values (HCVs): HCVs include but are not limited to primary (old growth) forests, intact forest landscapes (areas of primary forest that are 50,000 hectares or larger), and habitat for Rare, Threatened and Endangered species. In some geographies in North America, logging is causing harm to HCVs.

Best practice is for project teams to:

  • include a requirement for suppliers to avoid wood from unacceptable sources in specifications and procurement documents. Many firms already operate with a practice-wide master specification that prohibits wood from old growth forests or requires FSC certification whose standards protect old growth and other High Conservation Values.
  • conduct a risk assessment of source supply areas that have been identified . The most reliable source of information on risk can be found in FSC Risk Assessments[1].

Where an FSC Risk Assessment has a finding of elevated risk in a given geography (in FSC terminology, “specified” or “non-negligible” risk), project teams can ask suppliers for evidence of compliance with their commitments. Such evidence can take a variety of forms, some of which are more robust than others. Here are examples ranked from least to most reliable:

  • Formal declarations by suppliers
  • For deforestation/conversion, analysis using remote sensing tools (e.g., Global Forest Watch)
  • Attestations from independent experts (NGOs, academics, etc.)
  • Supplier invoices or other documentation indicating that the material is FSC Controlled Wood
[1] As of this writing, FSC Risk Assessments can be found in the FSC Document Center. In the future, they will be on the FSC Risk Hub.