Sector Focus: France | 27
SUMMARY
■The EUDR replaces the legality focused EU Timber Regulation
■The new regulation requires timber origin geolocation information
■AHEC has focused on developing a bespoke system
■There is co-operation across the Congo Basin to drive sustainable management practices
DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
At an AHEC-ATIBT seminar at the Carrefour International du Bois, the US hardwood sector and tropical producers presented their contrasting proposed routes to demonstrate their timber’s deforestation-free status. Mike Jeffree reports
Europe, including the UK, accounted for around 10% of the US hardwood sector’s export total of US$2.7bn in 2023. Underlining the importance it attaches to the market was the cluster of US stands at the Carrefour International du Bois (CIB) around that of the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC). These represented both individual companies and the sector in the states of Virginia, Wisconsin, and North Carolina.
“The industry wants and needs to diversify its export markets, not least to reduce its dependence on China, where demand has been hit by its housing sector crisis,” said AHEC executive director Mike Snow. “And besides continuing to develop our European markets, we’re also increasingly exploring other prospects including India and the
Middle East and the CIB is also a valuable venue in that context given its international profile today.”
The US industry is also under pressure to boost sales generally. After rising around 11% in 2022, driven by the domestic US home improvement boom and with exports of around US$3.36bn, overall US hardwood production fell last year to a long-term low. Besides leading to some production capacity shrinkage, this has hit harvest levels, resulting in fears that they may be overtaken by tree mortality. There are concerns the level of dead wood in the forest could result in greater incidence of forest fires, and said Mr Snow, it also has emission impacts.
“Currently tree mortality in the US releases an estimated 160 million tons of carbon a year,” he said.
This forms the backdrop to and intensifies the US hardwood industry’s concerns about the implementation, set for the end of this year, of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
The significance it attaches to the new EU rules were highlighted in a seminar at the CIB, which AHEC co-hosted with the International Tropical Timber Technical Association. The EUDR replaces the legality focused EU Timber Regulation. It requires that all operators and large traders placing timber and wood products (as well as 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.
In another departure, EU operators and large traders must also provide geolocation co-ordinates for the plot of land from which timber and other affected commodities originated.
Above: The AHEC deforestation-free assurance system will use satellite imaging
At the seminar, Mr Snow, said the EUDR “was going after the right things”, in terms of its prime aim, to combat deforestation caused by conversion of forest land to agriculture, and particularly in its coverage of the agro commodities most heavily implicated in this. And he said the risk of US hardwood deriving from such land was exceedingly low. “It’s estimated that disturbance of hardwood forest land in terms of conversion to agriculture affects about 0.005% of the total area a year,” he said. “In anyone’s book that is negligible risk.” ►
www.ttjonline.com | July/August 2024 | TTJ
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