BVRio's Design & Sustainable Wood Initiative has played a key part in reinforcing the role of small-scale producers in the Amazon by facilitating the production of wooden trophies for the final of the Brazilian Copa Verde Football tournament, which took place this weekend.

The BVRio Brazilian timber Due Diligence and Risk Assessment service has been updated this month with two revised service options for timber importers.

Production has started for the 2021 Copa Verde trophies, made with FSC® certified wood and designed by Guido Guedes and Alessandra Delgado.

The final in a series of five training courses will conclude this month, delivered through a partnership between the Environment Secretariat of Acre (Sema), Brazil and BVRio.

At the end of March 2021, BVRio completed its second project funded by the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) Forest Governance Markets and Climate (FGMC) programme. During the first project, running from 2015 to 2018, we adapted the Responsible Timber Exchange, originally developed for Brazil, to the circumstances of other tropical forest timber producer countries (Ghana, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Cameroon) and the consumer markets of the UK, EU and China.

There are over 50,000 species of timber in the world, but only a small fraction is widely used commercially. This, however, does not mean that the rest of the species are unsuitable for a variety of commercial uses. There under-utilised species are known as Lesser-Known and Lesser-Used Timber Species (LKTS) and can often substitute more popular species in terms of performance and aesthetics, and cost-effectiveness. This makes choosing LKTS a good business decision, which also has the potential to improve livelihoods and protect biodiversity.

In collaboration with Ghana Forestry Commission’s Timber Industry Development Division (TIDD), Forest Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG), Ghana Timber Millers Organization (GTMO) and the Ghana Timber Association (GTA), BVRio developed a set of communication materials that include technical information about a selection of timber species that are available to the international markets.

At the 12th BRICS Summit, held via video conference on the 17th November 2020, the Brazilian government “threatened to disclose” that “Europeans have purchased illegal timber from Brazil during 2017”. Indeed, this is true. Recent analysis by BVRio concluded that a high percentage of Brazilian hardwoods, exported to EU member states and the USA in 2016-2017, had a very high risk of illegality. The study was based on BVRio’s Timber Due Diligence systems, that uses big data analysis and satellite imagery and is able to able to identify the risk of irregularities in 99% of cases.

While Ghana has nearly 90 species that are regularly exploited and traded as timber, its diverse forests contain many other species that can be commercialised. Many of these under-utilised species have similar and sometimes even better performance capabilities than well-known species. Others have a distinctive and unique appearance that makes them ideal for creating attractive timber products. Using a more diverse selection of species is not only a good business decision but also has the potential to improve livelihoods, protect biodiversity and promote sustainable forest management.

With over 65% of the Republic of Congo covered by forest – an area almost the size of the United Kingdom - it is vitally important that sustainable forest management practices take place in the country, both to improve livelihoods and protect the forest. The main legislation to do this is the country’s Forest Code; in July 2020, a new version of the code received presidential approval after eight years of revision. This is an important milestone towards a more sustainable and inclusive forestry and timber sector.