The Furniture Sector in Pakistan: Export performance and ... - TRTA i

Box 2.8 Workshop on certification and sustainability for furniture manufacturers
Global conservation group Rainforest Alliance (www.rainforest-alliance.org) held its second
annual workshop on certification and sustainability for furniture manufacturers on
September 21, 2006 at the High Point fair. Discussions and presentations focused on
current initiatives in the furniture industry to promote responsible sourcing and procurement,
and how furniture makers can achieve Forest Stewardship Council certification through the
Rainforest Alliance’s Smartwood programme. Furniture companies can benefit from
participation in the following ways.
• Presentations regarding current initiatives within the furniture industry promoting
responsible sourcing and procurement
• Discussions on national and international trends in sourcing within the furniture
industry -- associated risks and the role of forest certification
• Forum for furniture manufacturers and suppliers to learn more about Forest
Stewardship Council (FSC) certification developments and processes
• Opportunity to discuss forest certification and trends in the certified products market
with a panel of experts with direct experience in this subject;
• Participation in an important networking forum with a group of key companies and
organisations.
It should be said here that Pakistan is far away from certification in view of its current unpreparedness
to tackle rampant forest sector problems. If the very basic principle of sustaining
the forest stock is not followed, then no international certifier can consider Pakistan as a
potential country in which to operate. The development of a national certification system will
take minimum two years. The costing estimates for either of the two options are very random
unless the area (size of forests), volume of wood harvested, cost of forest operations and wood,
and the quality of present legislation, forestry practices and human skills are known.
Chain-of-Custody (COC) certification
The focus of the timber certification debate has been moving from the forest certification
(sustainability) to the chain-of-custody certification. The chain of custody – or wood
tracking (1) – is a sequence of ownership or control from one to another along the supply chain
(Figure 2.5). It can also be understood as the identification of material throughout all the
processing and transportation stages from the initial raw material source to the final product.
A practical exercise: By filling out this type of diagram with actual firms and traders, the
Pakistani industry and value chains could be more easily understood. Things like how many
cubic metres are in each flow, how it changes ownership/for what price mark-up, how many
kilometres of transportation is typically needed, how long time wood is stored, etc. can be
useful questions for a policy-maker. 1
The chain of custody is required to be certified in connection with the labelling of forest-based
products. A label shows that wood raw material – or a known portion of it – comes from
sources that are acceptable to a particular labelling system. In addition to forest certification,
with which the chain-of-custody certification is usually associated, it could be used for
showing that wood comes from legal sources.
1
To be specific, wood tracking is not a synonym for chain of custody rather than an aspect of it, but in this
report chain of custody and wood tracking are used interchangeably.
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