Meise Botanic Garden, a Flemish Government research institute in Belgium, has been working with World Forest ID to develop methodologies for analyzing traded timber products. As most traded forest products are processed, a credible scientific approach to understanding their location of harvest requires research to demonstrate whether their chemical signatures can be compared against World Forest ID’s reference data, which is derived from unprocessed timber samples collected directly from trees.
Dr. Victor Deklerck, Director of Science at World Forest ID, based at Meise, explains the complexities of testing traded wood: “The vast majority of high-risk wood products in global trade are processed in some way - from oven drying to gluing fibers. This means that scientific approaches can only be used to tackle illegal logging at scale if we can design methods that withstand processing and demonstrate their effectiveness in tracing much more than simple logs. Running tests in collaboration with manufacturers to ensure that our reference data works for their supply chains helps us to create a system that can support mainstream use of the technology.”
To achieve this, Dr Deklerck has been working with Garnica, a leading European producer of plywood, and Paged, a prominent furniture manufacturer based in Poland, to analyze the stable isotope ratios in log stem discs, component parts cut from the same log, and plywood made from those parts. The goal is to determine whether the results are comparable and if the location of harvest for deconstructed plywood that has been stripped of glue and any other chemical additive can be credibly determined.
While Garnica’s forestry team ensures that the raw materials they purchase are from deforestation-free sources, tracking timber origin throughout the production process is more challenging. Garnica is working with World Forest ID to verify the origin of its raw timber, semi-processed timber (veneer), and fully-processed timber (plywood) to maintain traceability throughout its supply chain. Traceability is important to Garnica for building consumer trust: “Consumers should know what wood species they are buying and where it came from. Unlike many other products where this information is guaranteed, wood products often lack such transparency.”
Paged is contributing samples of birch (Betula spp.) veneer and plywood to this project in order to build out World Forest ID’s birch (Betula spp.) origin model. Traceability holds a heightened significance for Paged since Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, which triggered the European Union (EU) to impose sanctions on wood products harvested in Russia and Belarus, banning them from EU markets. However, adherence to this ban on direct imports into the EU has been inconsistent. The European Commission launched a formal investigation into Russian birch plywood imports from Turkey and Kazakhstan following rising volumes of imports since the sanctions which resulted in a retroactive extension of anti-dumping duties to cover imports from these countries in light of the investigation. Furthermore, several incidents have demonstrated how Russian birch continues to flow into the EU, such as when Belgian authorities identified 261 tonnes of conflict timber in March and verified the location of harvest using World Forest ID’s origin model. Paged emphasizes, “We consistently observe circumvention practices. Providing evidence based on factual wood origin is crucial for effective law enforcement.”
This collaboration aims to evaluate whether traded plywood samples can be accurately tested against the World Forest’s origin model, as detailed in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Plants. Specifically, it examines whether differences between the derived measurements of reference samples and traded samples need to be reconciled using conversion factors, to maintain the validity of the origin model.
Preliminary results are promising, and trials are ongoing. Full results will be available for peer review and published in a scientific journal later this year.
