Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 will, to a great degree, depend on implementing a “circular economy”. In the forest sector, this relates to how we manage forests and use forest products. The Forest Products Annual Market Review covers recent trends, policies and market intelligence on forest products along with production, consumption and trade statistics for the UNECE region; all of which are critical to the role of forests in creating a more circular economy.
This publication provides general and statistical information on forest products markets and related policies in Europe, North America and the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Review begins with an overview chapter, followed by analysis of government and industry policies and market-based implements affecting forest products markets. The third chapter is on innovation in the forest sector. Five chapters are based on annual country-supplied statistics, describing: wood raw materials, sawn softwood, sawn hardwood, wood-based panels, and paper, paperboard and wood pulp. Additional chapters discuss markets for wood energy, value-added wood products, and housing. In each chapter, production, trade and consumption are analyzed and relevant material on specific markets is included. Tables and graphs provided throughout the text present summary information.
This publication highlights the use of wood for energy and includes the most recent statistics on wood energy markets across the UNECE region. It aims to communicate the relevance of wood energy in the region and help bridge information about the forest and energy sectors. It also intends to offer some of the best-available information on the role that wood energy can play in various sectors to support environmental, energy, and socio-economic strategies toward a greener economy. It focuses on commercial wood energy uses in the UNECE including energy generated for cooking, heating and electricity generation.
In September 2013, Indonesia officially signed a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) to guarantee the legality of all timber products exported to the EU. Under the Indonesian VPA, a timber legality assurance system known as SVLK (Sistem Verifikasi Legalitas Kayu) has already been developed and has been in effect since 1 January 2013 for woodworking, wood panels, and pulp and paper. When the VPA is fully implemented, SVLK will become FLEGT legality license and will meet European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR) requirements for legal timber. The objective of this paper is to analyze the challenges of implementing SVLK in the small-scale forestry sector of Indonesia. The paper also assesses whether a mandatory approach to legality verification will be more effective in terms of assuring legality than voluntary approaches, such as certification. The analysis involved desk-based analysis of government statistics, policy documents, key stakeholder interviews, and field surveys in three major timber-producing provinces of Indonesia Central Java, East Kalimantan and Papua. The paper discusses a number of challenges facing the implementation of SVLK, among others the cost of timber legality verification, limited societal awareness of SVLK, business legality issues among small-scale enterprises, and high levels of illegality in their timber supply chains. The paper closes by presenting a detailed set of policy options to address the observed challenges.
