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Sustainable Hardwood Coalition

The Sustainable Hardwood Coalition (SHC), an initiative by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), ensures that U.S. hardwoods are legally sourced, deforestation-free, and climate positive. It offers independent, cost-effective, and robust assurance of the sustainability of U.S. hardwoods at scale using the latest remote sensing, wood provenance identification, and Life Cycle Assessment technologies combined with expert jurisdictional risk assessment.

Overview of SHC

SHC will provide an effective and verifiable process to assure end users that U.S. hardwood from smallholder-managed forests is both legally sourced and deforestation free.

Legality risk assessments

In the SHC Assurance System, the risk of illegal harvesting is assessed against the “Framework for Jurisdictional Risk Assessment (JRA) of Legal Compliance of Hardwood Production in the USA”. The JRA Framework is designed to consider all aspects of legal compliance in the hardwood producing industry in the U.S., from point of harvest to point of export. It is applicable to hardwood logs sourced from forest properties used in the production of sawnwood, mouldings, veneer, plywood, engineered wood products, and co-products from hardwood mill residuals.

News

SHC to integrate with EUDR Information System

The European Commission has just delivered on its platform for companies to provide EUDR data by launching the online “Information System”. A key objective of the SHC Assurance System is to allow U.S. hardwood exporters to quickly and efficiently provide their EU customers with the data they need to enter onto the EU system.

Comprehensive independent assessment confirms negligible illegality risk in U.S. hardwood sector

Probably the most comprehensive series of assessments of the risk of illegal harvesting ever undertaken anywhere in the world has just been completed by the Sustainable Hardwood Coalition (SHC).

Should regulators demand assurance of good forestry practice at a plot or jurisdictional level?

SHC is developing an approach to good forestry assurance which can help resolve one of the key debates over the most effective concept: should assessment be at a plot or jurisdictional level?

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Support the Sustainable Hardwood Coalition and be part of something better!

For SHC to grow into the powerful tool that the hardwood industry needs, your support is essential.

We have produced a Statement of Support which we hope you will endorse. You can sign the Statement by clicking the button below.

Sign our Statement of Support

AHEC's role in the SHC

The SHC was initiated by AHEC, the leading international trade association of the American hardwood industry. All AHEC programs are run though the joint efforts of the U.S. hardwood industry and the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In supporting SHC, AHEC’s objective is to ensure U.S. hardwoods are universally recognised as legally harvested, deforestation-free, and climate positive in international markets through a mechanism that is cost-effective and equitable for U.S. hardwood exporters and their suppliers, and which acknowledges environmental benefits and responds to sustainability challenges specific to the U.S. hardwood sector.

AHEC believes there is an opportunity to develop robust jurisdictional risk-based forms of sustainability verification for hardwoods sourced from non-industrial forest owners. Innovations in technologies in the fields of earth observation, plant-chemistry-based provenance identification, AI and data management, and communication are providing new opportunities to develop very robust and timely risk assessment and chain of custody verification.

While AHEC has initiated the SHC, other interests from amongst the wider potential stakeholder group are expected to support the program and aid its transition to an independent body with its own income streams.