CPET activities

This has been a very busy time for CPET, with invitations to present at a number of international meetings, plus CPET hosted the Technical Panel review in Oxford at the end of September. We have also begun a new year of timber training workshops which have already been well attended.

On September 22^nd, CPET’s project manager Sofie Tind Nielsen presented at the Sustainable Forestry Initiative’s annual conference in Vancouver and explained the UK timber procurement policy to the attendant international delegation, see presentation and video interview.  CPET was also invited to present at a Workshop on Forest Governance & Sustainability Standards arranged by GTZ and COMIFAC 28 Sept -1 Oct in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, where Sofie spoke on European public procurement policies for timber and impacts on the market for certified products,  see the presentation here. CPET also attended and presented at the International Timber Trade Federation Day on October 6-8^th, see presentation here.

A key event the past months was the Technical Panel Category A review, on September 29^th and 30^th, held at Proforest’s offices in Oxford. The four members of the technical panel convened for the 2^nd time and discussed their review of the CPET assessment of the certification schemes. The panel’s findings have been collated in a report, which was presented to the CPET Reference Board meeting on the 21^st October. CPET is now awaiting confirmation on issues raised by Technical Panel from FSC and PEFC and the results of the 2010 assessment of the schemes will be published before the end of the year.  We also held our regular Reference Board meeting last month and you can find the lastest minutes here.

CPET’s training workshops were run in London and Oxford over the past months and the next workshops are scheduled for Liverpool next week on the 25^th November and in London on the 5^th January. The workshops cover responsible purchasing, illegal logging, the UK Government Policy, definitions, the types of evidence that are available and how to check them, as well as topics such as contract conditions and implementation. Please find further information on upcoming workshops and download the booking form here.  CPET have also scheduled a workshop to explore Category B cases, to be held on January 25th 2011.  For more information see here.

The last and 7^th meeting of the Standing Forestry Committees ad Hoc Working Group on public procurement of wood and wood-based took place last week 12^th November in Brussels. CPET has been supporting Defra and other EU Member State policy leads over the past year and a half and have been sharing our experience with the implementation of the policy in the UK. The working groups final report will be presented to the Standing Forestry committee in December and will also be published on the CPET website.

The Impact assessment of the policy commissioned by Defra, and undertaken by Efeca Ltd., has now been finalised and will provide a reference for future policy work. Defra and CPET would like to thank all stakeholders who fed in to the report; your input is important and much appreciated. The report will be published on the CPET website before the end of the year.

CPET is sad to announce that Nick Moss has moved on from his role as Awareness Coordinator. Nick’s role will be taken over for now by Anna Cura (anna@proforest.net) who has been providing support to CPET over the past year and the handover over the past months has been smooth.

Nick would like to thank everyone who he has worked with over the past year for all your help and support. It has been a fantastic experience working on the awareness raising and CPET and he is confident that Anna will do an excellent job in taking the work forward.