Traceability & Transparency
Project Stages
Procurement Options

Encouraging transparency within the forest industry and improving the traceability of forest products are vital to the goals of promoting climate-smart forestry and rewarding companies and forest managers who go the extra mile to supply climate-smart wood.

What are “traceability” and “transparency,” and why are they foundational?

  • Traceability: The ability to track backwards from an end product up its supply chain to its origin
  • Transparency: The disclosure of information about both the supply chain and origin. In the forest industry, there are two main components (see below for detail): supply chain mapping and disclosure of relevant information about the source forest or forests.

A typical wood product supply chain involves a diverse combination of timber owners and harvest practices, the raw logs resulting from which are commonly aggregated at a primary mill that produces boards of varying grade and intended use. In the simplest case, these boards are ordered directly by a mass timber manufacturer and the end product is fabricated to meet a project’s design requirements. However, there may be many other twists, turns, and links in the chain.

See full size version