Research On The Correlation Between Chain Of Custody Certification Standard And Timber Legality Verification System

In recent years, illegal logging and related trade issues has become the hot and sensitiveissues of the international community, as it has directly resulted to series of adverse social andenvironmental issues. The international community has already taken a variety of actions andmeasures to crack down on illegal logging and related trade issues.In May of2008, the United States enacted the Lacey Act Amendment to extend the scopeof the bill to the wood and wood products to ban illegally harvested timber and wood productsinto the U.S. market. October2010the EU adopted the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR)requiring the operators to conduct the Due Diligence to the timber and wood products.November2012Australia passed the Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill to reduce the risk ofillegally harvested timber into its circulation to combat illegal logging by the form oflegislation.As EU is the second biggest wood products trade market, and EUTR definitely requiresthe operators to conduct Due Diligence, China specially develops the Chain of CustodyCertification Standard according to the EUTR. The standard can help industries to get thedemonstrate of the legal origin of timber and timber products. Meanwhile, relevantdepartments are trying to make the China’s timber legality verification system, to provideanother way to demonstrate the legal origin of the wood and wood products for companies.There have been several researches on the comparison between forest cerfication andtimber legality verification system at home and abroad, but most of them focus on comparingthe existing world system from the macro level, or contrast the forest management standardand the timber legality stand. But studies on the two systems of a specific country are rarely.This paper conducts from this degree, discussing the relevance of China’s Chain of CustodyCertification Standard and Timber Legality Verification and the similarities and differences inthe operation. In addition, this paper provides recommendations for the development of the research on China’s timber legality verification and for enterprises to cope with the EUTR andother international requirements on timber legality.The research of the comparison between the two systems are conducted throuth thesystem objective, the specific operational methods, and the adaptability to EUTR, difficulty ofthe operation and other aspects, in theoretical level and practical level in general. Thecomparison shows that the two systems can both guarantee the legal sources of timber andlegal circulation, but the chain of custody certification can not only ensure the legality oftimber sources, but also ensure the sustainability of timber sources. In the other hand, relativeto the initial state of the timber legality verification system, chain of custody certification hascompleted the pilot and been fully developed. Timber legality verification ensures the legalityof timber wood through an agreement with the country of origin, which is a large difficulty inthe operation, while chain of custody certification is conducted directly by the certificationbodies, which is simple and easy. EUTR has determined that certified timber and woodproducts have low-risk of illegal logging and no further risk aversion is needed. But whethertimber legality verification system can obtain the EUTR’s acceptance is still unknown.As can be seen through this study, there is a big repeatability between timber legalityverification and chain of custody certification, espacially on the operational level. So it impliesto merger timber legality verification into forest certification. For businesses, if they are inableto establish and maintain effectively the whole supply chain, chain of custody certification isstill the best choice.