The Global Timber Forum (GTF) took a significant step in its development as an international timber trade communications and networking hub, and arena for evaluating solutions to key issues, at its Shanghai Summit in early June.

The Summit drew over 100 delegates and the topics covered ranged from wood promotion to market sector legality requirements. China’s market opportunities and challenges, and wood’s green building prospects, also featured and donor agencies and policy-making bodies participated.

The concept of the GTF was first presented in 2013, with funding from the UK Department for International Development. An initial summit in Rome, co-convened by the European Timber Trade Federation, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (UNFAO) and TFT Action Plan, then attracted delegates from 40 trade bodies worldwide and selected an Advisory Panel representing the different continents and China.

Underlining the latter’s interest in the initiative – and the country’s growing global timber sector role – the Shanghai GTF summit was co-hosted by the China Timber and Wood Products Distribution Association and China National Forest Products Association, with respective Secretaries General Tao Yiming and Shi Feng welcoming delegates.

China – challenges and opportunities

In frank discussions on ‘promoting harmonious forest products trade development between China and major trading partners’, leading Chinese industry figures discussed challenges posed to their sectors by countervailing duties and market legality requirements, such as the US Lacey Act and EU Timber Regulation (EUTR). They also addressed meeting customer country product standards, with reference to current US legal issues over the formaldehyde content of imported Chinese flooring. Tackling these areas, they said, required wider industry collaboration, more market information and R&D.

Cindy Squires, Chief Executive of the International Wood Products Association (IWPA) and GTF North America Panel member, said the US industry would work with Chinese ‘brand partners’ on shared trade and legality issues, but that key areas needed addressing, including labelling.

"If labels say products use wood from a particular source and are CARB rulescompliant on emissions, that’s what it must be," said Ms Squires.

Robert Simpson, EU Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Manager at the UNFAO, updated delegates on its forestry and timber legality assurance support programme, currently involving 100 projects in 34 countries. He also looked at tropical trade flow impacts of market legality requirements.

He said there were no ‘silver bullets’ for suppliers in meeting latest national and international legality rules, but that Asia’s rising profile in the tropical and wider trade gave it potentially positive market-shaping influence. He maintained that the GTF could facilitate dialogue on the issues and that the growing global green economy was an opportunity for all legal, sustainable timber.

Consultant George White addressed legality issues from demand and supply side perspectives, presenting initial findings from his GTF-backed survey on small to mediumsized businesses’ strategies for meeting lastest market legality requirements.

Covering companies in Europe, Africa and Vietnam, the report at exercise of due diligence by the former under the EUTR. Early conclusions were that larger companies were not necessarily better at due diligence and that average annual expenditure on it by companies surveyed was €33,000. Mr White also found that that currently UK companies currently operated Europe’s most robust due diligence, followed by Germany, the Netherlands and Italy, then France.

Opportunities in green building

Timber’s opportunities in construction were tackled from various directions. Jérôme Lapierre of Canadian architects Atelier Pierre Thibault emphasised how his profession valued wood for technical and environmental performance and its capacity to "integrate buildings into the landscape".

Sylvain Labbé, chief executive of the Quebec Wood Export Bureau, focused on prospects for wood in green building, a global business now worth US$90 billion annually. Within this sector, prefabricated wood construction had particular potential, given its combination of speed and low environmental impact, with China’s annual market set to hit US$16 billion by 2017.

Mr Labbé said timber building prospects were further boosted by the evolving Common Carbon Metric for measuring construction energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, which is backed by the UK Environmental Programme .

Addressing broader opportunities for timber, panel speakers from China, Canada, the Philippines, Ghana and Guatemala were positive, although stressing the need for international cooperation to help producers add value, improve legality assurance and secure premiums for legally- and sustainablyverified material.

Tony Neilson, founding editor of Australian-based international wood construction magazine timber+DESIGN and GTF Summit Chairman, was also blunt in warning that the industry still faced ‘fundamental problems’.

"To build consumer and specifier confidence, we must have zero tolerance of illegal logging and improve marketing," he said.

GTF Oceania Advisory Panel member John Halkett of the Australian Timber Importers Federation also urged delegates’ active involvement in the Forum.

"The wider the participation, the more tangible benefits we will gain," he said. Rachel Butler of the GTF Secretariat agreed, but said the organisation had already made significant progress. Besides developing its interactive website (www.gtf-info.com) and global contact base, it had facilitated market legality requirement capacity building in Myanmar, Africa and Malaysia and set up regional facilitators in Africa and China. "Together we can now determine our future strategies," said Ms Butler. "We will establish a legal status and seek longer term funding to develop the GTF’s role as a muchneeded international trade networking and discussion facility