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Five "Green" Trends May Impact Chinese Forest Products Industry Most

Since 2008, the State Forestry Administration of China, US Agency for International Development, EU FLEGT Asia Program, and international environmental groups led by the Nature Conservancy (TNC), the Rainforest Alliance (RA), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have jointly delivered three major annual conferences under the theme “Forests, Markets, Policy and Practice” to address industry’s growing need for market information and expertise relating to sustainable forestry, forest certification and legal timber trade issues in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly within China. The most recent one was held in Beijing in September 2010(http://www.cfcn.cn/cmc3/indexe.asp). These events were well attended with an average size of 350, and about two-thirds of the participants were from forest products industry in China of various business types. The fourth annual event is scheduled to be held in Shanghai in June 2011.

In October 2010, conference organizers conducted a survey with over 650 participants from the past two three annual events “Forests, Markets, Policy and Practice” conferences in Shanghai 2009 (http://www.cfcn.cn/cmc2/cmc2_en.asp) and Beijing 2010 (http://www.cfcn.cn/cmc3/indexe.asp) in order to understand what “green” trends would be perceived to be most relevant to the forest products industry so as to guide future event planning. Based on the feedback from 128 respondents (over 70% are Chinese), many in the industry say they are seeing a growing awareness of the environmental and social and legality challenges, but these could also be turned into opportunities, were the industry to embrace sustainability concepts into business practices. The top five “green” trends that are believed to impact the industry most in the near future include: forest certification, legal timber trade policy, green sourcing initiatives of private sector, corporate social responsibility, and climate change-related forest carbon market (REDD) (see figure below).