ITTO’s Executive Director, Emmanuel Ze Meka, inspects the identification tag on a Cameroonian log in Shanghai, China, as part of the monitoring of ITTO Project TFL-PD 017/09 Rev.2 (M). That project, described on page 17, aimed to assist small and medium-sized forest enterprises in China in procuring legal tropical timber from sustainably managed forests. Photo: Li Qiang, ITTO
Public timber procurement policies have been a hot topic of debate among governments, tropical timber traders and environmental groups for a very long time. Environmental groups argue that tropical timber-importing countries can lead the way to sustainable forest management by buying only certified or at least legally verified tropical timber; timber-exporting countries say that such procurement policies give non-tropical timber an unfair market advantage; and traders worry about the cost of conforming to new standards.