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Danish Ministry & Chatham House host workshop
February 2008
An increasing number of countries have in recent years adopted public procurement policies for timber as tools to exclude illegal timber and to promote the use of legally and sustainably produced timber. As Christian Lundmark Jensen from the Danish Government says, “On the one hand these measures may provide major incentives to promote sustainable forest management. On the other hand, concern has been raised over potentially negative impacts, when policies lead to technical barriers to trade in timber and wood products, even if it is not intended.” Chatham House research concludes that in spite of many similarities, there are also some rather significant differences in design and operation of the various Member State timber procurement policies. With this in mind the Danish Ministry of the Environment and Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs) are co-hosting a workshop to be held in Copenhagen on Monday 7th and Tuesday 8th April 2008.
The workshop agenda will include sessions on:
- Options for including social criteria in technical specifications for sustainable timber in public procurement policies
- Analysis and comparison of existing procurement policies, including what is known about their impact.
- Lessons learnt and key challenges identified in previous workshops and arrangements.
- Latest developments in EU procurement policy and guidance and related topics including FLEGT
- Discussion of the inclusion of other sustainability criteria such as extent of forest resources/conversion of forests as well as practical issues of implementation, including chain-of-custody certification mechanisms and options for using/assessing alternative means for documentation.
For registration please send an email to chhen@sns.dk as soon as possible and no later than 27 March.
For more information please refer to http://www.mim.dk/eng/News/20082902_Workshop.htm
All relevant documents will be made available on the website
