News | 09.04.2021
The Thémis data gathering portal is a joint effort of various timber trade federations and associations (ATIBT, LCB and Fedustria) and organizations that promote sustainable management and associated trade. The Thémis tool collects timber sourcing data to monitor, benchmark, communicate and so help increase sourcing from well managed forests. Growing the market for responsibly sourced timber is key to incentivizing uptake of verified sustainable forest management across the globe.
The development of Thémis is being led by Netherlands-based international forest and timber sustainability consultant Probos, which has over a decade’s experience of monitoring and reporting on verified sustainable procurement in the Dutch industry and for the Dutch and Belgian governments. Funding is being provided by IDH – The Sustainable Trade Initiative and the Congo basin Programme for Promotion of Certified Sustainable Forest Management (PPECF), plus the federations themselves. Although the main donors focus on tropical regions, the tool also covers softwoods, temperate hardwoods, panels and some secondary wood products.
As a importer members of ATIBT and/or LCB, you are invited to share your annual timber purchase and trade data via this online tool: www.timbermarketsurvey.com, available in French and English. Sharing your annual data helps to increase transparency and monitor market developments. Further, the portal helps individual companies to gain insight in their corporate social responsibility aspects and will ultimately help them to know how this relates to competitors and the overall timber sector. The data collected helps us target interventions to promote responsible sourcing and will distinguish our members from non- members and should help positively brand the sector and timber generally. Your data will be safely stored and will not be disclosed individually with third parties.
The tool aims to stimulate continuous improvement on sustainable sourcing and to reward good performance of companies. For this, in the coming months a system will be developed in which individual companies can be objectively scored and ranked based on a pre-defined set of goals (these goals are developed together with organizations). We aim to embed the Thémis data gathering portal structurally in our organization in a phased approach, relying initially on a voluntary approach by our members.
To guide you in the use of this new tool, LCB and ATIBT will co-organize a webinar on the portal. We will soon send you a Doodle to agree on a date.
If you have any questions about the portal, please contact Josépha COACHE : josepha.coache@atibt.org
For more information on the Themis project, you can read this article.
