The Clean Wood Act Revision Bill (a bill to partially revise the Act on Promotion of Use and Distribution of Legally Harvested Wood and Wood Products) was approved and enacted on April 26, and promulgated on May 8.

The English explanation page of the Clean Wood Act is available on the Forestry Agency's website, but it does not yet introduce the contents of the revised law. (As of August 14, 2023)

For the time being, we report the summary or the bill on this site.

(Contents of the bill)

Seven years have passed since the Clean Wood Act came into effect, and the registration of timber business operators is not functioning well (the target was set to register 13,000 companies (Forestry and Forestry Basic Plan measurement index R2 years, but only 5% have been achieved (right figure)

And only 40% of demand is for legally certified timbe.

Thouse are the background of this revision proposal.

The figure below (published by the Forestry Agency) is the background of the proposed revision.

As indicated in the figure below (from the outline of the bill published by the Forestry Agency), the three main revisions are: (1) upstream and waterfront timber-related businesses must confirm legality, (2) businesses that produce and sell materials must provide information, and (3) retail businesses are added to the list of timber-related businesses. We will look at the contents in turn.

(Obligation to verify legality, etc. by upstream and waterfront timber-related businesses)

In the figure on the left, the brown-colored operators that were subject to Class I registration before the revision, namely, both "upstream timber-related businesses" that purchase logs directly from material producers for domestic timber and "waterfront timber-related businesses" that import timber, are required to (1) collect raw material information and confirm legality (Article 6), (2) prepare and maintain records (Article 7), and (3) verify the legality of the timber (Article 8). ), (2) creating and keeping records (Article 7), and (3) communicating information (Article 8).

The EU Timber Regulation (EUTR), for example, requires the "first business operator to ship timber products to the European market" to conduct DD (due diligence) (the above three points).

The most important Article 6, which confirms legality, states that "the legality of timber products shall be verified by collecting and organizing information on raw materials (tree species, harvesting areas, copies of legal harvesting certificates issued by governments as specified by Cabinet Order, etc.) and, based on such raw material information, as specified by the applicable ministerial ordinance, whether or not it is highly probable that such timber products do not fall under the category of timber products from illegal harvesting. (2) Confirmation that the timber is legal timber

The confirmation of legal timber is not "confirmation that the timber is not illegally logged," but "confirmation that there is a high probability that the timber does not fall under the category of timber from illegal logging, etc." Therefore, there was some discussion during the committee's deliberation process as to whether gray (gray) rather than white was also included. However, the details of this issue have been carried over to the future Cabinet Order and Ministerial Ordinance to be drafted. (The ordinance will be enforced within two years after its promulgation (May 8), so we will consider the issue until then).

(Obligation of information provision by material producers and sellers)

In the case of domestic timber, the upper left-hand corner of the above diagram shows the obligation to provide information such as logging and silvicultural reports when requested by upstream operators.

In the case of imported timber, the business operators are overseas suppliers, so it is not possible to mandate them under the Clean Wood Act, which is a domestic law (mandated only for the upper arrow of the two arrows). (This is an issue to be addressed in the future.)

(Adding retailers to the list of wood-related businesses)

In the bottom right of the top figure, retail businesses such as home centers that sell wood to consumers are to be included in the wood-related business category. (Article 2, Paragraph 4) (A little confusing from the text of the law)

This will allow retailers closest to consumers to become registered businesses under the CW Law and to promote themselves as such by saying, "We only deal in CW! (Answer by the House of Representatives Committee).

I think this will have a big impact.