Voluntary Legal Timber Validation (VLTV)

Voluntary Legal Timber Validation (VLTV) is the “voluntary, country level” approach to SGS’s portfolio of Independent Verification of Legal Timber (IVLT) services.

Through a scheme endorsed by the national/ regional Government, VLTV proposes a programme of continuous monitoring and verification of timber production and tracking information. It combines voluntary initiative by individual forest companies, and support from relevant authorities. VLTV provides an alternative where enforcement of a mandatory LTV programme would face political, legal or institutional difficulties. It may also meet the requirements of bilateral/ multilateral trade agreements (e.g. proposed EU FLEGT Voluntary Partnership Agreements). VLTV has a potential to evolve towards a mandatory framework for the licensing of all timber exports under such agreements.

The legal timber verification system deployed under VLTV results in verification reports and statements being independently issued, relying on a combination of log and timber tracking, data monitoring and legality verification checks. A separate agency is created and managed directly by SGS, operating independently of government while ensuring an effective interface and collaboration with relevant government bodies and other key stakeholders.  

Generic Legal Origin (LO) and Legal Compliance (LC) principles developed by SGS provide the basic requirements for VLTV. The process, leading to the ‘’legality’ validation of given timber products under VLTV covers four distinct elements:

1. the company (a forest logging, a timber processing, or a timber trading company);
   
   
2. the production or operational site of the company;
   
   
3. the activities carried out by the company on that site (i.e. logging, processing or trading); and
   
   
4. the products themselves.

A VLTV Statement is issued when the four elements consistently meet all the requirements in force under the VLTV Programme. For export, the Statement could be validated by, or on behalf of the competent authorities, possibly in the form of a sale/export permit designed to meet export market requirements.

Regardless of the systems employed by the company VLTV is underpinned by a risk management approach to inspection and monitoring, and to the testing of the traceability of log/timber products throughout the supply chain. Computerised systems greatly facilitate reconciliation between the volumes of, for example, inventories, annual permits, production records, and transport or shipping documents. Itemised log/timber tracking also allows full traceability of the products back to a legitimate source ‘on the click of a button’ for the purpose of supporting any legality claim. VLTV uses a mechanism to link the successive segments of the “chain of custody” (CoC) to each other while respecting confidential commercial information: through a stepwise process for recording any product movement, change in state, or sale, the initial VLT Statement is updated or transferred to the new owner also meeting the above requirements.