The focus of the timber certification debate has been moving from the forest certification (sustainability) to the chain-of-custody certification. The chain of custody – or wood tracking – is a sequence of ownership or control from one to another along the supply chain. It can also be understood as the identification of material throughout all the processing and transportation stages from the initial raw material source to the final product.
A practical exercise: By filling out this type of diagram with actual firms and traders, the Pakistani industry and value chains could be more easily understood. Things like how many cubic meters are in each flow, how it changes ownership/for what price mark-up, how many kilometers of transportation is typically needed, how long time wood is stored, etc. can be useful questions for a policy-maker.
The chain of custody is required to be certified in connection with the labeling of forest-based products. A label shows that wood raw material – or a known portion of it – comes from sources that are acceptable to a particular labeling system. In addition to forest certification, with which the chain-of-custody certification is usually associated, it could be used for showing that wood comes from legal sources.
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