• Forest certification

Forest certification

This report assesses the environmental impacts of China’s pulp and wastepaper production as well as the reputational risks related to China’s pulpwood sourcing from “high risk” countries. The report argues that the greatest environmental challenge related to China’s fiber consumption is to ensure that their pulp and pulpwood imports originate from sustainable and legal harvesting operations.

Key findings from the report include:

• since 1990, China has accounted for over 50 per cent the world's overall growth in paper and paperboard production with forecasts predicting that paper consumption in 2010 could increase by 4.8% per annum
• imported secondary fiber, or wastepaper, has been the primary driver of this expansion, recording a 29.8% annual average growth by volume in the period studied
• imported pulp and pulpwood are the two smallest components of fiber consumption, at 13.5% and 0.7% respectively. These resources provide high-quality wood pulp, used to produce international quality printing and writing paper
• it is estimated that a total of 7.4 Mt, or at least 63.5% of China’s imported pulp, can be regarded as having been drawn from sustainably managed forests
• a significant portion comes from Eastern Russia and Indonesia, where forest governance capacity is low. Paper manufacturers that source from these countries are likely to be running a high risk of including illegally logged wood in their product.

The paper concludes that the most obvious environmentally detrimental effects arising from this analysis involve the activities of those companies that are importing uncertified pulp or pulpwood from Russia and Indonesia, especially the latter. It is not known whether this imported material is plantation sourced or purchased from contractors who have obtained it illegally.

Based on these findings, the report makes that following recommendations for actors in the wood product industry in China:

• establish systems to track wood all along the supply chain
• actively promote certification, log-tracking, supply-chain management approaches, and adapt existing legislative approaches tackle underlying problems in both consumer and supply countries
• develop and harmonise public procurement policies
• review the costs and benefits of programs that promote large-scale pulp and paper industries.
  

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