The Forest Trust, (formerly Tropical Forest Trust (TFT)) aims to increase the area of forestry where it is helping improve management systems from 4.2 million ha to 100 million ha in five years.
The Swiss-based organisation described its target as ambitious.
“But we believe the magnitude of the problems of deforestation and climate change requries a rapid expansion of our product based, supply chain model,” it said.
The Trust announced its name change earlier in the summer and said the move was designed to reflect the need to promote sustainable forest management worldwide.
Established in 1999, it initially focused on the tropics because “that’s where the most intractable issues were at the time”.
Today, said the Trust, its work helping forestry operators towards FSC certification and “traceability and legality in timber supply chains” are increasingly relevant outside the tropics.
“At the same time, more companies are being driven to seek our support in the US and EU as the [timber procurement] compliance frame work is changing and companies need to prove their wood products are from legal if not sustainable sources.”
The Trust has 88 staff working in 14 offices around the world.
