Denmark

In May 2010, Danish Minister for the Environment, Ms Karen Ellemann, launched new, revised guidelines on public procurement of legal and sustainable timber.

The 2010 guidelines replace the former DK guidelines "Purchasing Tropical Timber" of 2003 on legal and sustainable tropical timber and the temporary DK guidelines of 2006 on legal timber only, covering all kinds of timber.

The DK guidelines are a voluntary tool aiming to help public buyers in actively seeking to buy legal and sustainable timber.

In essence, the 2010 guidelines recommend that timber from FSC- and/or PEFC-certified forests as well as other forests managed according to corresponding standards are considered as both legal and sustainable timber.

They recommend that all PEFC and FSC Chain of Custody certified timber are considered legal timber representing a share of timber that are sustainable and/or recycled (normally at least 70 %, although in certain cases only 50 %, e.g. for particle board).

Additionally, the guidelines list schemes, which are considered sufficient for verifying legal timber, currently TLTV (SGS), VLC (Smartwood), OLB and upcoming FLEGT licenses.

In all cases alternative means of appropriate and equally convincing evidence are allowed for, all though special rules apply for smaller purchases, if deemed of interest for Danish suppliers only. It may be requested by the buyer to have alternative means of evidence independently verified. Should a supplier, who doesn't have a CoC certificate from either FSC or PEFC, wish to supply non labelled timber from FSC or PEFC certified forests as "sustainable"then such alternative means of evidence of the timber source are to be provided.

The guidelines recommend two options for buyers, when inviting tenders for legal and/or sustainable timber:
• Either set minimum requirements for legal timber and a certain amount of sustainable
and/or recycled timber (typically at least 70%, although only 50 % in some cases).
• Or set minimum requirements for legal timber only and (optional) award criteria for a high share of sustainable and/or recycled timber.

The full extended version of the 2010 guidelines is available (in Danish only) at:

www.naturstyrelsen.dk/Naturbeskyttelse/Skov/Miljoet/vejledning/

More information:
Christian Lundmark Jensen
Email: clj@nst.dk
Phone: +45 7254 2602

Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information on existing national timber procurement policies, we recommend checking with the national procurement policy contacts for the most up to date information.