Aiming high
for Forests

Our Forest Campaign aims high. We want nothing less than a market in 100% legal and sustainable timber in the UK by 2020. Yes, that’s pretty ambitious stuff. But with global demand for wood set to triple by 2050, it’s vital that we find effective ways to protect the world’s forests – and soon.

And I’m thrilled to report we’ve made some excellent progress this year – thanks especially to support from business and from more than 100,000 people who signed our petition. 

Working hand in hand with businesses that trade in forest products has been a real key to success. We know that clear support from them will give us a much better chance of influencing the decision-makers who can make trade in 100% legal and sustainable timber possible. 

So the overwhelming support that business has given our campaign has been critical. And witnessing the commitment of those that are leading the way on sustainability has really inspired me. 

For starters, more than 50 businesses have pledged (as part of their support for our campaign) that by 2020 they’ll buy only legal and sustainable timber. And it was thanks to working with these businesses that we’ve been able to come up with viable ways to establish a market in sustainable timber. 

Representatives from many of the businesses stood beside us to show their backing when we launched our solutions in Parliament in March. This event was attended by 60 MPs, including Lord de Mauley, who was minster responsible for international forests at the time.

After the general election, businesses joined us as we met the new minister and pushed home our campaign messages to him. And businesses from across the EU joined us at a reception in Brussels in November to show the European Commission how strongly they support one of the main calls of our campaign: for improvements to the EU Timber Regulation so it becomes truly effective at preventing all illegal timber from being traded in the EU. 

But there are also many businesses that need to do more. To highlight this, we produced a Timber Scorecard that ranks companies on the quality of their timber procurement policy. What was most heartening for me about this exercise was seeing just how many low-scoring companies wanted to engage with us once they saw the result – because they wanted to make improvements. We’ll continue to work with these companies to help them boost their score for the next scorecard in 2017. 

I’ve also been overwhelmed by the level of public support for our campaign. More than 100,000 people signed our Save Forests petition, almost 10,000 contacted businesses that didn’t have a clear policy on sustainable timber to ask them about the wood in their products, and more than 2,000 people wrote letters and emails to their MP. 

Such support for change from both business and the public is a great way of making sure our message is loud and clear – and can’t be ignored.

I’m really encouraged that the UK government and European Commission are now listening. We’ve made sure they’re very clear about what we want. Our next challenge is to ensure we get decisive action from them. 

Help us to save forests