ITTO is an action and field-oriented organization with more than 30 years of experience. ITTO develops internationally agreed policy guidelines and norms to encourage sustainable forest management (SFM) and sustainable tropical timber industries and trade. ITTO also helps tropical member countries to adapt such guidelines and norms to local circumstances and to implement them in the field through projects and other activities. It has funded and assisted in the implementation of more than 1000 projects and other activities addressing the many aspects of SFM, such as forest restoration; wood-use efficiency; the competitiveness of wood products; market intelligence and transparency in the tropical timber trade and tropical timber supply chains; forest law enforcement and governance; illegal logging; biodiversity conservation; climate-change mitigation and adaptation; the contributions of non-timber forest products and environmental services; and the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities.

ITTO’s membership represents about 90% of the global tropical timber trade and more than 80% of the world’s tropical forests.

IFSA’s Engagement

IFSA has been a strong partner for ITTO for a couple of years already. Together, the organizations have conducted plentiful collaboration in terms of education and youth engagement related to international forestry activities. IFSA supports many ITTO agenda items, especially related to the topics of Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) and timber legality. On the other hand, ITTO continuously provides IFSA with opportunities to increase its members perspective on sustainability through regional and international events. For example, ITTO repeatedly invites IFSA members to join ITTO-related projects and provides training to IFSA members both directly and indirectly about the issues of timber and certification. Recent IFSA participation with ITTO was in the Global Green Supply Chains (GGSC) Forum 2019 in Shanghai China where IFSA delegates were sponsored to actively participated as observers in the discussion.

Angela Gabriela Veneros Zerpa is the Head of ITTO Sub-Commission