FAO/UN-ECE - Forest Products Market Review
Following an invitation by the European Timber Committee (ETC), ESM’s Deputy Program Leader Florian Kraxner co-authored a chapter on Certified Forest Products Markets in the FAO-UN-ECE Forest Products Annual Market Review 2011-2012 (Fernholz and Kraxner, 2012).
The chapter stated that by May 2012, the global area of certified forest was about 400 million hectares. Almost all the recent growth in certified area was in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) subregion, primarily in the Russian Federation. Of all certified forests 92% are in the northern hemisphere, and only 2% of tropical forests are certified.
The report further elaborates that the potential supply of industrial roundwood is about 27% of all global production. The chapter concludes that, even though the certified forest area is still increasing, the certification programs will face increasing competition; they will need to define their niche in the light of the development of targeted standards that address specific market issues such as climate change policies, illegal logging controls, and bio-based material/bioenergy material assurances.