The SHC Assurance System is being implemented in three phases:
An online portal is being developed for registered users that, in the first instance when launched before 30 November 2024, will be U.S. hardwood exporters, to provide their access to the SHC deforestation risk data at state and county level, alongside the results of the SHC-endorsed JRAs.
The online portal will provide a simple and user-friendly mechanism by which U.S. hardwood exporters can prepare, with each individual consignment for onward sale, a due diligence statement containing summary data, and links to relevant documentation, on the legal and deforestation-free status of U.S. hardwoods. The portal will automate the gathering and entry of standard due diligence data including the exporter’s name and address, product description (harmonised system code, free-text description, trade name and full scientific name of the species) and product quantity.
Using drop-down lists and point-and-click maps, the portal will allow exporters to generate a file containing geolocations of all counties from which hardwood contained in the consignment may have derived. This will be a geoJson file conforming to the WGS84 coordinate standard and EPSG:4326 projection as required by EUDR.
During 2025, the web portal will be integrated with a new SHC Chain of Custody (CoC) standard for demonstrating the legal and deforestation-free provenance of U.S. hardwoods. The web portal will be extended to accommodate registered users, both upstream and downstream of U.S. hardwood exporters.
Under the SHC CoC standard, primary hardwood processors and exporters of logs and other unprocessed hardwood material in the U.S. registered on the system shall use the web portal to determine: (a) the risk of illegal harvesting in the specific states where they source timber; and (b) the risk of hardwood forest land being converted to agriculture in the specific counties where they source timber.
Where risks are specified, primary hardwood processors and exporters of logs and other unprocessed hardwood shall mitigate these risks in their future procurement activity for any products they wish to sell bearing the SHC legal and deforestation-free claim.
The web portal will provide a mechanism for registered users to share due diligence data required by the CoC Standard with customers that are also registered to use the portal.
SHC is cooperating with the U.S. Forest Service International Programs’ Wood Identification and Screening Center (WISC) in their work to develop plant-chemistry based testing procedures to identify harvest location of finished forest products.
Lab-based techniques include Stable Ratio Isotope Analysis (SIRA) and Trade Element Analysis (TEA). Another technique known as Laser-induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) may allow testing of finished products on-site, using portable hand-held devices.
All these techniques require the prior establishment of comprehensive databases of timber samples covering a variety of commercial species from across the U.S. hardwood production area. The larger and more representative the database, the higher the resolution and confidence of the provenance test.
The process of building the database and refining the testing techniques may take up to 3 years, but when ready, will provide an extremely robust method to ensure the integrity of SHC labelled products, while also reducing the need for more traditional chain of custody audit checks.