Household timber producers supported through the iTwood traceability system

Household plantations in Viet Nam manage approximately 3.69 million hectares of plantation forests. Plantations are a central part of an extensive reforestation programme in which Viet Nam has embarked on, committed to planting 1 billion trees nationwide by 2025. Plantations also represent an important source of timber for the fast-growing wood processing industry in Vietnam, which contributed over USD 12.6 billion to the Vietnamese economy in 2020. 

The nature of household plantations in Viet Nam makes it difficult to manage them and to ensure full traceability of the origin of household plantation timber. Household producers are often informal, scattered and manage small areas of plantations (less than 1 hectare per household). They have complicated and diverse forest tenure systems and production models and often lack the capacity, knowledge, and resources to meet regulatory requirements or demonstrate compliance. It is anticipated that household producers will initially be affected by the implementation of the Viet Nam Timber Legality Assurance System (VNTLAS), which will increase legality verification and supply chain control measures. VNTLAS will trigger forest governance gains but is likely to increase costs linked to formalisation and legal compliance – potentially excluding a part of smallholder producers from legal timber trade. 

Recognising this risk, the Forestry Economics Research Centre (FEREC), in partnership with the FAO-EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Programme, upgraded and tested the iTwood traceability system for use by household plantations, allowing more efficient and transparent plantation management whilst supporting timber traceability and facilitating participation in formalised legal timber supply chains and trade.

Read the full story here: https://www.fao.org/in-action/eu-fao-flegt-programme/news-events/news-d…