Inside IKEA's quest for sustainable wood

Industry Insight from Ethical Corporation Magazine, a part of Thomson Reuters.

September 29 - "Losing biodiversity is like having holes in the walls of your house. It will not be able to withstand winters or hot summers," says Inter-IKEA Group's global head of forestry Mikhail Tarasov. In an interview with The Ethical Corporation he pointed to biodiversity loss as one of the biggest threats to the world's forests.

Competition for forest resources and accelerating climate change, which is driving wildfires and the spread of pests and disease, add to the challenge for IKEA. The company, which processed 14.7 million cubic metres of round wood for its products last year, is one of the world's largest consumers of timber, most of it sourced from Europe. That figure, however, represents a 30% reduction in its consumption since 2019, in part by recycling and reusing wood in its products.

IKEA is working to promote better forest management so that decisions on the harvesting of trees take account of local conditions, and combine management with protection and regeneration.

The different IKEA entities own over 500,000 hectares of forest. Tarasov's group is piloting "climate smart" forestry on 16,000 hectares in Latvia.

Together with the European Forest Institute and Preferred by Nature, an international non-profit that works to improve land management, the partners aim to establish which combination of tree species would be most resilient, depending on climate conditions.

He notes, for example, that spruce and pine stands in Europe are being decimated by bark-beetle infestation, while eucalyptus is vulnerable to forest fires.

Tarasov expects to have a proof of concept around the end of the year, with a view to scaling up successful solutions in the different forest environments of Lithuania, Poland and Romania. It aims to feed what it learns into forest certification systems and use its heft to raise industry standards.

Through a long-running partnership with WWF, IKEA has mapped over 90% of the virgin and old-growth forests left in the Carpathian mountains of ⁠eastern Europe. "The old forest has unique values, not only because they're old forests, but because they host species that you may not find in some other forest. So those must be set aside from active forest management for protection," Tarasov explains.

Nearly all the wood the group sources is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), but many investigations have shown this can't always be relied upon as a guarantor of where wood originated.

Tarasov points to other "lines of defence" the company relies on to verify sources. Its IWAY procurement system, introduced in 2000 and now on its sixth iteration, sets criteria for sourcing and requires suppliers to trace wood back to its origins. IKEA also does its own audits, as well as commissioning them from independent third parties.

"What is unique for my organisation (are) the specialists, (the) boots on the ground in all the major procurement countries that are doing verification in high-risk supply chains." These include the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania. "This is nothing like a frozen system. It's an ever-evolving and improving system," Tarasov insists.

Many of the processes needed to meet the EU's new deforestation regulation (EUDR), which comes into force at the end of this year, are already in place, though there have been some changes to meet its technical requirements. "It's how we do things, rather than what we do," observes Tarasov.

The EUDR which aims to cut the bloc's impact on global deforestation and forest degradation, "will definitely send a clear message across the industry that there is robust verification (and) better controls" now in place.

But some environmental NGOs argue IKEA is not doing enough to protect forests. In a statement, Greenpeace says it's concerned that IKEA "appears to have focused on ⁠proving where its wood comes from, rather than doing enough to ensure that wood from Europe's forests of high biodiversity value does not enter its supply chain in the first place."

It has alleged that some of IKEA's suppliers have sourced wood from old-growth forests, particularly in Romania, allegations that IKEA denies.

"We have no wood from protected forests in Romania in our supply chains. And we will continue working tirelessly to ensure that it remains so."

The statement adds that while Inter-IKEA Group welcomes scrutiny to improve forest management, it does not "see a disconnect between our commitment to biodiversity and our approach to wood sourcing."

While Greenpeace acknowledges IKEA has not acted illegally, it says the company should avoid logging in areas of high biodiversity value, even though they don't have legal protections.

The tension between IKEA and the NGO exposes the gap between legislation and definitions that Greenpeace argues are too narrow.

And while the ⁠EU's 2030 biodiversity strategy calls for "biodiversity-friendly practices" and strict protection of primary and old growth forests, robust data to enforce this is lacking.

The EU's Joint Research Centre has identified inadequacies in mapping that arise because many countries don't have the observational data and there are differences in how countries define forests. The researchers estimated a disparity between country reports and independent mapping of around 4.4 million hectares. That's an area larger than the Netherlands.

For its part, IKEA has turned to forensic methods to help establish wood species and origin, including to ensure it doesn't come from Russia - a sanctioned country it once ⁠relied on. The company has been helping to build libraries of reference samples against which it can test wood, using anatomical, chemical and DNA analysis.

One of its partners is World Forest ID, originally set up by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London, to advance supply chain traceability. Now an independent non-profit, World Forest ID is increasingly working with retailers like IKEA to verify product origins in supply chains, as well with governments on materials from sanctioned countries. Companies can also use its system to verify the origins of a product ⁠at the plot level, as required by EUDR.

The library of tests isn't yet sophisticated enough to determine whether wood came from an old-growth forest. World Forest ID says while theoretically possible, intensive sampling would be required.

IKEA is also working with Kew on DNA analysis to identify which species of rattan is being used in its furniture. Rattan is an important export for countries like Vietnam and Indonesia, but is becoming less abundant. The partnership with Kew now aims to assess which species are at risk of extinction, and builds on work with WWF since 2009 to establish a sustainable rattan supply chain in Vietnam.

But no single company, however large, can address all the challenges forests face, says Tarasov. "It's a really consolidated effort that is required."

This article is from the latest issue of The Ethical Corporation magazine, on deforestation risk. You can download the digital pdf of the magazine by clicking here

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Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias. Ethical Corporation Magazine, a part of Reuters Professional, is owned by Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News.

Angeli Mehta

Angeli Mehta writes the Policy Watch column for Ethical Corporation, Thomson Reuters' sustainable business magazine. She is a science writer with a particular interest in the environment and sustainability. Previously, she produced programmes for BBC Current Affairs and has a research PHD. @AngeliMehta