Keurhout admits SmartWood’s VLO and VLC systems to Keurhout-Legal!

Since January 25th 2010 the Keurhout Board of Experts (BoE) has admitted the VLO and VLC Systems of SmartWood/Rainforest Alliance (SW/RA) to its Keurhout-Legal system. The Rainforest Alliance is an international non-profit conservation organisation that offers its clients in the field of forestry the SmartWood program. SW/RA is a well known Certification Body in the field of forestry. It applies a phased approach to certification. It is accredited by FSC for certification of sustainable forest management (SFM), Chain-of-Custody (CoC) and controlled wood (CW). SW/RA is also associated to ISEAL (the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling Alliance) and follows ISEAL procedures for standard development and revision.

Through independent auditing, certification and the promotion of certified products, SmartWood’s purpose is to improve forest management by providing economic incentives to businesses that practice responsible forestry. The program also comprises a series of verification services, such as for legality verification: Verification of Legal Origin (VLO) and Verification of Legal Compliance (VLC).

The VLO system has been designed to verify that timber comes from a source that has a documented legal right to harvest, pursuant to the laws and regulations of the government of the jurisdiction, while forest management complies with main legal regulations. Suppliers of VLO timber must follow and maintain documented CoC systems. The VLO timber is traced and verified throughout the supply chain. The VLO system became operational in November 2007; so far approximately 1,8 million ha are covered, involving 17 VLO statements in 3 countries (Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia). New verification processes are in progress in China, Paraguay and Brazil.

The VLC system goes beyond that: it considers all applicable and relevant national laws and regulations as well as international agreements. VLC is used to assess and verify that producers of timber and/or non-timber forest products (NTFP’s) have complied with all the laws applicable to forest harvesting in the country and jurisdiction of operations and that all points along the defined supply chain maintain adequate systems to document and control the CoC. So far no VLC statements have been issued, however several companies are actively preparing for it in different countries.  

Both systems consist of two components: a) the forest management component, which verifies a certain level of legality of forest products and; b) the CoC component, which verifies the presence and appropriateness of a timber tracking system from the source until the final product.

Between September 2008 and January 2010, on request of Keurhout participants, a validation study took place of the VLO and VLC systems. The study included the review of all relevant documents and discussions with the VLO/VLC system manager. Additional insight was gained through the revision of field audit reports. In July 2009 the BoE concluded that the VLC system could be admitted to the KH-Legal system. As no VLC verification statements had been issued yet, it was decided in coordination with the VLC system manager to postpone the admission and the announcement. The assessment of the VLO standard revealed a number of issues that needed to be addressed. After the adjustment of the VLO standard, followed by a two-month stakeholder consultation round at the end of 2009, the VLO system could be admitted as well, based on the new VLO standard dated 18/01/10. The admission of VLO and VLC systems to the Keurhout-Legal system has a validity of 5 years. In principle the validation concerns the entire VLO and VLC systems. However, in the case of VLO the admission is directly related to the use of the new VLO standard. In other words: only those verification statements issued against the new VLO standard dated 18/01/10 will be admitted to KH-Legal. All operations currently verified will be audited against the new standard within a period of 6 months.

The above means that a significant addition, both in total admitted area, as in admitted number of CoC certificate holders, to Keurhout Legal is to be expected within the next half year. The total certified area covered under Keurhout-Legal hereby will amount to 10,7 million ha, whereas the total admitted number of CoC holders will increase to approximately 155.  As a result not only the volume of Keurhout-Legal timber is expected to increase, but also the volume of Keurhout-Sustainable timber level 2 (of which up to 30 % may consist of Keurhout-Legal timber).

After the assessment and admission of several certificates to the Keurhout-Legal system (since 2005), the SW/RA VLO/VLC system is the third certification system which has been positively assessed against the Keurhout Protocol. Admission of a certification system to Keurhout-Legal implies that in principle all certificates that have been/are issued under the system are admitted to Keurhout-Legal.

All timber processing companies with a VLO/VLC certificate are properly controlled with respect to compliance with specific requirements which aim at assuring that timber from controversial sources is excluded. Timber from third party sources is controlled according to VLO/VLC requirements for legal origin. SW/RA verifies compliance with those conditions every six month.

Admitted exporting companies may request permission to use the Keurhout-Legal logo on-product, in line with the procedures as detailed in the Keurhout-Logo Guide. Keurhout-Legal timber can either be sold as such or be applied in Keurhout-Sustainable level 2 products.