The due diligence of timber products from forest plantations

Abstract

In the European Union, the marketing of timber and timber products has long been subject to compliance with the legality requirements set out in EU Timber Regulation 995/2010 (EUTR), which introduces for the first time forest due diligence into EU environmental legislation. The even more innovative EU Regulation 2023/1115 (EU Deforestation Regulation - EUDR), which will enter into force on 30 December 2024, adds to the well-established due diligence procedures, the obligation to geolocate timber harvesting areas and to verify the absence of deforestation and forest degradation. Forest plantations unrelated to these phenomena contributes to alleviating anthropogenic pressure on natural forests, producing quantitatively and qualitatively significant shares of raw material. In the future, given the growing global demand for wood, plantation forestry is set to play an increasingly strategic role, provided it is balanced with other land uses and respects natural ecosystems. Subject to these conditions, the regulatory compliance of plantation timber is easier to prove than that of material from natural forests, which are subject to suitably more limiting utilization restrictions. This implies a de facto simplification of the compulsory due diligence required to minimize the environmental and legality risks considered in the current EU legislation, and this paper aims to demonstrate the reasons why.

Keywords

• due diligence
• deforestation
• forest degradation
• timber production
• forest plantations
• eutr regulation
• eudr regulation