The Sustainable Tropical Timber Coalition (STTC) and ATIBT’s Fair & Precious (F&P) branding campaign are to collaborate in communications and marketing. Both initiatives promote verified sustainable tropical timber in Europe and highlight the role demand for it plays in incentivising the uptake of sustainable forest management in tropical supplier countries and in preserving tropical forest.

The two initiatives commend FSC or PEFC certification as procurement criteria. But while both have voiced support for the FLEGT VPA initiative and FLEGT licensing, with the latter advising the African private sector on implementation of VPAs and their impact on business, neither is willing currently to endorse licensed products in conjunction with certified timber.

In its latest strategy ‘roadmap’, the STTC lists as a key action point the need to ‘align where FLEGT stands in relation to promoting verified sustainable tropical timber’. It acknowledged FLEGT as ‘an important stepping stone to sustainability’ but said ‘timber trading companies need clarity on how to sell it”.

Under their cooperation agreement, the two will exchange information and coordinate websites. They will jointly produce six to eight newsletters annually, which will be distributed to a combined database, and develop and distribute a sustainable tropical timber marketing toolkit to certified operators and F&P brand users. They will also share and co-brand the annual STTC data market report monitoring European sales share of certified timber.

The STTC website