The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has published a report, Wood for Good: Solutions for Deforestation-Free Wood Products, analyzing tropical wood production’s effect on deforestation and offering solutions for sustainable production. The report identifies a threefold solution to meet the global demand for sustainable tropical wood: 1) turn to responsible plantation forests; 2) governments to develop policies that make sustainable forest management an attractive business prospect; and 3) all stakeholders should demand products certified by FSC or PEFC.

The Global Canopy Program is promoting the use of smartphones by indigenous communities to protect their forests. The strategy would see smartphone apps used to collect geographic data and photographs. This local data would then be linked to remote sensing data to enhance the monitoring of forest management. Up until now the effectiveness of community forest management projects in halting deforestation has been brought into question. The hope is that smartphones would play a significant role in helping local communities to manage their forests though there are some concerns that this would reduce the role of communities to simply collecting data without having input using their local knowledge on how their forests should be managed.

The Viet Nam Administration of Forestry announced that over 13,700 violations of forest protection and timber management laws were reported in the first six months of 2012. Around 623ha of forest land have been lost in this period as a result of changes in forest use purposes, illegal logging and forest fires. Government ministries working on the issue aim to tighten controls on the wood processing industry and local authorities have been ordered to review existing forestry projects and ensure that forest protection programmes are adequately funded.

Two forest managers and a businessman have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the illegal logging of 500 cubic metres of protected forests along the Laos border. The arrests follow those of six others who the Vietnamese police have proposed charging with violations of forest management and bribery.

PEFC has cleared Forestry Tasmania of unsustainable harvesting practices and re-certified the company for another three years. The audit came after allegations that the company was logging native forest at twice the rate of sustainable yield. The outcome was met with criticism from Kim Booth of the Australian Green Party who said, “the PEFC auditing that's done on Australian forestry standard harvesting methods is not worth the paper it's written on because the market's rejected it and that's the essential problem that Forestry Tasmania has fallen into”.

CIFOR highlighted the need for a new approach to enabling smallholder and community-managed forests to achieve certification in a side event organised by FSC at the RIO+20 Conference. They used an example in Bolivia where cases of theft were reported among the members. CIFOR believe that one of the reasons for this is due to insecurity as a result of formalising property rights which have cut some community members off from their traditional harvesting area. Additionally, the requirement to rotate no-take zones could lead to conflict within the community. CIFOR is in the process of collaboratively developing a new paradigm for smallholder and community forest management which will take into account the differing uses community members have for the forest and acknowledge that collective decision-making in a community may not be feasible.

Press release from APP promoting its Sustainability Roadmap for 2020. Key milestones will include having the capacity to be wholly reliant on raw materials from plantations by 2015; all current APP suppliers operating by the High Conservation Value Forest (HCVF) standards by 2015; and all current suppliers having credible certification for Sustainable Forest Management by 2020.

Allegations made against Tasmania’s state-owned forestry company of unsustainable harvesting of its native forests. PEFC is now investigating whether the company has breached its standards on managing its forests sustainably.