Japan’s Clean Wood Act and Tokyo Olympic Sustainable Sourcing Code for Timber

Japan is still the largest market for timber from Sarawak. Thus, it is important to understand the latest trends of the policy and initiative for timber legality and sustainability.

Japan issued the Act on Promotion of Use and Distribution of Legally-harvested Wood and Wood Products (Clean Wood Act) in 2016. The objective of this new act is to promote the use and distribution of wood and wood products made from trees harvested in compliance with the laws and regulations of Japan and the countries of origin. While it is not mandated, most of major timber trading companies were registered and started to report legal evidences of all timber imported to the government in 2019.

Besides, the Organizing Committee of Tokyo Olympic 2020 revised the Sustainable Sourcing Code for Timber in 2019, to clearly avoid to use timber and timber products sourcing from forest conversion to agriculture farm (e.g. oil palm plantation).

In my presentation, I will explain requirements of Clean Wood Act and the revision of the Sustainable Sourcing Code for timber and expectation of the future impacts.