Project/activity information

With the ever-increasing consumers awareness to sustainable forests management, forest product certification is becoming an important precondition for global market access. Despite its status as a major exporter of wood including West African teak, Benin has experienced a long delay in forest certification. In fact, until now, no forest certification initiative there has been launch and stakeholders are not sufficiently informed or trained. Principles, criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management which are the prerequisites for certification are not yet formulated. This set Benin forest products at a disadvantage and causes losses of economic and financial opportunities on the global market. This pre-project proposes to meet this challenge. It aims to comprehensively contribute to the sustainable management of forest resources through the certification of forest products from natural forests or plantations under sustainable management plans. Specifically this pre-project aims at gathering the information required to formulate a project forest certification project proposal in Benin. At the end of the pre-project, the main expected outputs are: (i) baseline information for the certification of ONAB national plantation estates is available, (ii) a project for timber certification in Benin is formulated and submitted to ITTO for approval. In more detailed and practical terms, this project will identify and describe the types of players and stakeholders involved in the certification process, conduct consultations and advocacy activities directed at all players and stakeholders involved in the forest certification process, formulate national-level PCIs and conduct a market review.