Touch wood! UP’s timber items to come with green certificates

In 2 months’ time, wood produced from the forest area will carry a hammer mark and certificate based on guidelines from Forest Stewardship Council

■

Items made of wood from Uttar Pradesh will soon come with a certification -Not made from over exploited forest - mandatory for sale of wood items in markets of Europe and the US.

The Uttar Pradesh Forest Corporation, which claims to follow majority of the international forestry norms, on Friday initiated the process for international certification by starting training session for its officials.

UP will be the first state in the country to get such a certificate.

“In two months time, wood produced from the forest area here will carry a hammer mark and certificate based upon the guidelines from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international organisation established in 1993 to promote responsible management of the world’s forests,” said Sachin Jain, CEO, Green Initiatives Certification and Inspection Agency (GICIA).

The GICIA is coordinating certification work for the forest corporation under which all the international norms will be applied upon wood collected from the UP forest. Officials said training of officials and implementation of the remaining few international norms will be implemented at the earliest.

“UP woods will have the same quality standard mark as wood from the jungle of Canada, US, Europe, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand have. This will not only fetch more money to the corporation but the items made from these wood will be accepted in international markets which buy only certified wood,” said Jain.

Certification would mean that the forest has followed all the international norms for con- serving the forest and the wood has not been ‘over-exploited.’

“This will be a confirmation of the fact that wood only from those trees that have either fallen on their own or grew old enough were being sold off,” said an official.

These norms were framed under the EU Timber Regulation that prohibits placing of illegally harvested timber and products derived from such timber in the market.

Jain said to ensure that such certificates were authentic and not misused, ‘chain of custody’ or a unique ID was given to each certificate and the invoice of all those who purchase the logs and items made thereon were put on a server.

“Hence if the certificate is misused it can be caught by a backward trailing method,” he claimed.

Forest officials, meanwhile, maintained that this would check illegal felling of trees as items made from illegal wood or over-exploited forest will have no value in international markets.

Forest officials from Gonda, Bahraich, Shrawasti, Gorakhpur, Sohelwa, Kartaniyaghat participated in the workshop.

Senior officials, including principal secretary VN Garg, principal chief conservator forest JS Asthana, RS Saini, SK Upadhyaya shared their views in the workshop.