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The Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry |
Updated Nov. 1, 2007 |
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Presented June 24, 2008 at the 62nd International Convention Forest Products Society, St. Louis Constance McDermott, Research Fellow, and Lloyd C. Irland, Lecturer and Senior Scientist, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, New Haven CT; A.L. (Tom) Hammett, Prof., Dept. of Wood Science & Forest Products, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA For further information, please email Tom Hammett. Download Tropical Supply Chain powerpoint. The Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies has been engaged by the U.S. Global Forest Trade Network, a WWF affiliate, to assess supply chains of tropical timber entering the U.S. market. At this writing, the work is underway; draft reports have been completed for three of the seven study regions. Methods include literature review, analysis of existing government data, interviewing with experts and industry members, and personal experience in several of these regions. Completion is expected in spring 2008. Tracking supply chains involves micro research at firm level. One challenge is that firms are reluctant to discuss individual customers and vendors. The prominence of weak governance, illegal logging, and the use of dummy corporate entities and involvement of criminal networks are common in more than a few tropical timber source areas. Firms are rarely publicly traded, and are often very small. We have already found that the notion of a "supply chain" is often naively interpreted to imply a level of rigidity and constancy of business relationships that is often absent, especially at the primary level. Implications of this research are significant for solving many current problems, including implementing environmental certification systems, the designing FLEG systems to assure legality of traded wood, and assisting buyers in the industrial nations who desire to "clean up" supply chains for wood raw materials used in their products. We believe that further applied and exploratory research on tropical supply chains deserves more attention in forest sector economic and marketing research. Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry |
