An attractive look, reasonable price and its durability all make tropical wood a favourite for manufacturers and customers alike. Some of the most popular are teak bathrooms or garden furniture. Also popular are mahogany cupboards plus varieties of tropical timber which are used in construction for floors.
The problem is that a very large proportion of tropical wood comes from natural forests – not from plantations or sustainable managed forests. Once felled these are lost forever, thereby worsening the fight against global warming.
In addition, in many regions at least just as much timber is logged illegally as legally, and for the customer it is almost impossible to make an ethical choice.
While some labels ensuring the origin of timber from legal and responsible forestry exist (with the one issued by the Forest Stewardship Council being probably the most known), it remains difficult to ensure that the furniture you buy was not made from illegally logged trees.
This is especially true as only a small proportion of wood on the market is labelled.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that less than 8% of the global forest area is eco-labelled and that less than 5% of tropical forests are sustainable, managed.
MEPs critical of timber trade agreement
Last Tuesday 23 September MEPs debated the EU’s accession to the 2006 International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA).
MEPs welcomed the fact that a new agreement was negotiated but in the resolution passed it states that it "falls well short of what is required to address the loss of tropical forests".
Speaking in the debate, the MEP who drafted a report on the issue - Caroline Lucas - described Parliament’s position as “very much a reluctant endorsement of an unsatisfactory agreement".
She pointed out that the agreement’s main objective was the promotion of trade in wood and not the protection of tropical forests or measures against illegal logging.
The British Green MEP went on to say that "half of all logging in regions like the Amazon, the Congo Basin, South-East Asia, is still done illegally".
The Chairman of the Committee on International Trade, German MEP Helmuth Markov (GUE), said that “13 million hectares (about half the size of Germany) of tropical forest are felled each year and that this results in an estimated 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions”.
Laws to ban illegal timber needed
MEPs therefore called for a revision of the agreement and reminded the European Commission that it has promised to make legislative proposals against the importation of illegally logged wood.
This June the US Congress passed a law making the import, purchase, sale and transport of products made from illegally harvested wood a federal crime.
MEPs also underlined the importance of buying preferences among public bodies saying that it "considers that public procurement policies should require timber and timber products to be derived from legal and sustainable sources".
When planning the "Willy Brandt" and "József Antall" buildings in Brussels, the European Parliament's administration was instructed to ensure that doors used in the buildings were made from certified wood of European origin, even though it was not easy to find.
