The International Wood Products Association launched a responsible trade initiative with Myanmar (Burma), the Southeast Asian country home to about 45 percent of the world's natural teak.
The International Wood Products Association launched a responsible trade initiative with Myanmar (Burma), the Southeast Asian country home to about 45 percent of the world's natural teak.
The initiative, made possible by a U.S. Treasury Department license, will promote forest management reform and trade between U.S. wood importers and Myanmar's timber industries and government agencies. The hope is that encouraging trade with the U.S., whose trade is governed by international wood species treatises, will lessen the impact illegal trading in Myanmar has had on the country's forests.
"IWPA's goal is to be a positive force in Burma by encouraging the development of independent legality verification and sustainable management of Burma's forest resources," said Cindy Squires, executive director of the IWPA, in a statement. "Currently, logging legality verification programs are in their infancy in Burma, and our plan is that by launching direct trade with the country we can provide critical market support for the establishment of such programs."
In a recent report, the Environmental Investigation Agency found that two species targeted by Chinese importers for furniture manufacture, Burmese rosewood and Burmese padauk, could be commercially extinct in three years if illegal trading and demand is not culled.
U.S. importers working under the license procured by the IWPA will encourage mills in Myanmar that supply product to U.S. importers to conduct independent legality verification of the wood.
"This initiative will help wood traders meet their responsibility to know their supply chains by allowing for direct trade," Squires said.
