PEFC International and Keurhout meet the Dutch procurement criteria for timber. This is the conclusion of TPAC, the Dutch Timber Procurement Assessment Committee. Commissioned by Dutch State Secretary for Infrastructure and Water Management, TPAC carries out assessments of certification systems for acceptance by the sustainable procurement policy of the Dutch government.
TPAC has advised the Dutch State Secretary for Infrastructure and the Environment to continue approval of PEFC International and Keurhout with regards to the Dutch procurement policy. Continued acceptances will be decided on and issued by the State Secretary. Currently it is not known when this decision will take place. The currently approved systems can be found here: www.smk.nl/tpac.
The judgement was preceded by a thorough review procedure. For every assessment, TPAC invites stakeholders to share their knowledge and experience with certification systems via online fora. TPAC investigates the contributions and, once the review has closed, reports on how these are incorporated into the final conclusion about the system.
Assessment PEFC International
PEFC has been assessed against the criteria of the Timber Procurement Assessment System (TPAS). The relevant criteria for PEFC are the requirements for Sustainable Forest management (SFM), Chain of Custody (CoC) and Development, Application and Management of Certification Systems (DAM). Part of the assessment by TPAC is the functioning of PEFC International as an umbrella system that approves national and regional certification systems. To that end compliance with the TPAS requirements on the “Procedure on Endorsement of Certifications Systems by a Meta-System (PEM)” have been assessed. In order to gain some insight in how the PEFC standards and protocols are translated into practice, TPAC has assessed four country certification systems that are endorsed by PEFC, i.e. Indonesia, Russia, Gabon and the Netherlands.
Assessment Keurhout
This assessment concerned the re-assessment of Keurhout. Keurhout has also been assessed against the criteria of the Timber Procurement Assessment System (TPAS). The relevant criteria for Keurhout are the requirements for Chain of Custody (CoC) and Development, Application and Management of Certification Systems (DAM). The Keurhout standards which were revised in 2019 are part of the current assessment which addresses all currently valid standards.
