New president BoE Keurhout

July 1st 2009

Recently, after more than 13 years in that position,  Prof. C. J. Jepma left as President of the Board of Experts (BoE) of Keurhout. The reason is that he could not combine this function with his new position as President of the Energy Delta Institute, a cooperation between the GasUnie and the Rijks Universiteit Groningen (RUG).
In his farewell speech Prof. Jepma indicated to be impressed by the quality of work delivered by the BoE. He stressed that the BoE has contributed positively to the development of the Keurhout system, which counts those days with a complete Protocol with standards for the validation of certificates and systems for Legal Origin and Sustainable Forest Management. The significant increase in KH-admitted area and number of KH-admitted CoC companies for both the KH-Sustainable and KH-Legal system and the increasing number of Keurhout participants over time (actually almost 200 companies) show that Keurhout has a role to play. Prof. Jepma considers that the critical assessment by the BoE has contributed to better forest management and that the use of a phased approach has been important for the acceptance of sustainable and legal origin timber by the timber sector He thanked the BoE for the very pleasant and professional cooperation and wished them good luck with any future challenges.

The Keurhout Management Authority has appointed Dr. H. de Iongh as the new President of the BoE. Dr de Iongh joined the BoE as member in 1998. Dr de Iongh is employed at the Centre for Environmental Studies (CML) of the University of Leiden. He also serves as Regional Councillor for Western Europe in the IUCN Council, the highest organ of IUCN (the International Union for the Concervation of Nature).