Junior environment minister Joop Atsma planned to ignore his own commission on sustainable wood and buy tropical hardwood for the government, the Volkskrant reports on Tuesday.
Atsma had arranged to buy the wood from Malaysia but on Monday the court in The Hague ruled the purchase illegal. The case was brought by environmental and development organisations.
Wood can be classified as sustainable only if felling the trees does not damage the forest as a whole. The commission charged by the environment ministry with checking if wood is sustainable said at the end of 2010 the Malaysian wood did not qualify.
The minister ignored this advice and accepted his Malaysian counterpart's promise to improve management of the forest. He was also lobbied by the wood industry which gets a significant part of its hardwood from Malaysia.
By 2015, 50% of tropical hardwood must be sustainably produced.
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Certification for hardwood lumber has already become a "must" in international market. Now more and more forest owners try to get the their forest certified .
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