Eco-Positive Wood: A global market for smallholder wood from the South
Room: GRAND BALLROOM ‘D’
Recent developments now provide an opportunity to create fair markets for native wood products from smallholder forests in the South. These markets could act as a powerful tool to reverse the alarming destruction of forests. Secure incomes allow smallholders to become agents of forest improvement by engaging in sustainable forest management.
Forest protection and restoration is a focus of development agencies, impact funds, carbon schemes, and big corporations. The discussion has moved beyond preservation to one of market-based interventions. However the focus of this has been on large scale mono-culture plantations where forest communities are often excluded as active agents in the value chains.
Examples of inclusive value chains are rare and often not competitive in the global marketplace. The Eco Positive Wood Model acknowledges that the inclusion of forest rights-holders is a necessary condition in order for a market-based intervention be effective in scaling forest improvement and protection.
The Eco Positive Wood initiative aims to create such markets by launching a programme that supports the creation and scaling of value chains. Over the past ten years a model of a competitive and inclusive value chain has been developed and tested. The model is adaptable to different conditions but builds on four main pillars:
• Sustainable and active forest management by local rights-holders
• Small-scale and high quality timber processing for access to advanced markets
• Direct communication and joint product development between the main actors
• Communication of the positive effects for the forests and the local communities
Translation: None
Open to all participants
Speakers:
1) Maria Ines Miranda, Fairwood Connections (Facilitator)
2) Berty van Hensbergen, Eco Innovation Foundation The problem and opportunity.
3) Aaron Kaplan, Eco Innovation Foundation.
The support for Eco Positive Wood.
A smallholder producer
A Manufacturer in Europe
A Retailer in Europe