New corruption figures: changes in Controlled Wood risk
The new Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released by Transparency International has implications for companies sourcing controlled wood from countries with a CPI fluctuating around 5.
Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) is the key information source for both the PEFC and FSC systems when evaluating the risk of buying illegal wood from a country. CPI is a measure of how the population perceives corruption levels; for obvious reasons, it is hard to obtain hard data on the issue.
The CPI ranges between 0 and 10, where 10 indicates the optimal situation with no corruption. With a CPI at 9.4, New Zealand is currently the country with the lowest corruption rate in the world.
According to FSC, countries with a CPI index below 5 can not be considered as “low risk areas” with respect to legality in the controlled wood system. Companies sourcing wood from countries with a CPI below 5 are required to conduct field verification to control that wood purchased in these countries does not originate from illegal harvesting.
Changes for countries in Europe
According to the CPI register for 2009, the CPI of four of the world's countries has fallen below 5 since last year. Malaysia, Latvia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Companies sourcing controlled wood from any of these countries now need to carry out its own FSC Controlled Wood verification program for the assessment of legality. Among other requirements, the company needs to describe and carry out regular field audits to verify the origin of the wood.
Poland is the only country in the world where the CPI moved upwards past the threshold of 5 - it went up from 4.6 to 5.0. Transparency International praises Poland's efforts to eliminate corruption.
As Transparency International notes in a related press release, the European region is "far from corruption-free". And EU membership does obviously not gurantee a low corruption level. The following EU countries now have a CPI below 5: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia.
To view a map indicating the legality risk evaluation of all countries according to the new CPI figures, go to the Global Forest Risk Registry website.
To view the CPI figures, go to the Transparency International website.
