Dutch cities partner with community tropical timber operations
ITTO Tropical Timber Market Report, 1st – 15th May 2025: 'Dutch cities partner with community tropical timber operations'.
Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands are partnering with Central and South America community forest and timber operations and using their wood in municipal projects. The business links have been formed under the Cities4Forests (C4F) programme which fosters trade between European urban authorities and communities in the tropics.
The project is also intended to support sustainable forest management through development of the wider international market for what it terms Conservation Timber. The latter is defined as wood sourced from forests managed by local communities supporting the forests’ long-germ preservation.
Development of trading channels for this timber also involves sawmills, exporters and importers. FSC Netherlands is also participating in the project ‘to further ensure sustainability’ of forest management and timber ‘where needed’. It is supporting communities with preparations, including training, for certification under its ‘Continuous Improvement Procedure’, which involves a ‘self-conformity’ check to assess compliance with FSC criteria and a step-by-step auditing process.
Copenhagen, Turin, Galway, Glasgow and Paris have now signed up the C4F programme too. With the support of the Inter-American Development Bank, work is also underway to broaden the scope of the project with partners in Surinam to include development of a market for ‘lesser known timber species’ and forest-related ecosystem services.
Probos acknowledged that under the initial C4F partnerships, volumes of timber traded so far are modest. “However, it has demonstrated to Rotterdam and Amsterdam that [this trade] is possible, what the potential can be, and what the positive impact on communities is,” it said.
Also see: Bosbericht 'Conservation Timber, wood with a story'Bosbericht 'Conservation Timber, wood with a story' and https://cities4forests.com/
