Global Wood --industry news and reports on timber and furniture and other wood products

Forest Certification Report Released
¡¾Feb.05, 2002¡¿

According to Forest Certification Watch's "2001 Year In Review" released at the opening of the 2002 Certification Watch Conference held in Montreal, forest certification is increasingly becoming a standard practice among forest products companies, especially in North America and Europe.

Jean-Pierre Kiekens, conference organizer and editor of the Forest Certification Watch Newsletter, said, "probably in five to ten years time, forest certification will become as mainstream as financial auditing. Today it is certainly not as mainstream, but it's getting there".

According to Kiekens, retailers such as Home Depot, Lowe's and Ikea are "more and more asking suppliers for certified wood". By the end of 2001, approximately 231 million acres of forest areas worldwide, mainly in Europe and North America, received some type of certification. That number is expected to rise as more organizations require certification.

Kiekens said that with an increasing number of certification schemes available, the certification process has turned into a logo race. "This logo race is basically an attempt to brand forest products in the marketplace", he said. "These labels are starting to appear in the marketplace and the goal is to have some sort of edge in the marketplace".