By Barbara Kessler

Wal-Mart Stores is joining the Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN), World Wildlife Fund’s initiative to save the world’s most valuable and threatened forests. The giant retailer also announced this week that it is moving toward making some of the jewelry it sells meet standards for sustainability and social responsibility.

Both steps are aimed at aiding the environment, with dual goals of assisting wildlife in jeopardized forests, and in the case of the jewelry, mitigating human rights issues in mining operations.

In joining the forest network, Wal-Mart is committing to phasing out illegal and unwanted wood sources from its supply chain and increasing its proportion of wood products originating from credibly certified sources, according to a WWF news release.

The United States is the largest consumer of industrial timber, pulp and paper in the world. The U.S. also is a top destination for imports of wood from areas where illegal logging and trade are common, such as Indonesia, China and Brazil; places where deforestation is stripping endangered species of habitat and contributing to global warming.

Wal-Mart’s commitment includes the importation and sale of all wood-based products with an initial focus on wood-based furniture. Wal-Mart says it sources furniture from the Amazon, Russian Far East, northern China, Indonesia, and the Mekong region of southeast Asia — some of the most biologically diverse places on earth.

Within a year, Wal-Mart says it will complete an assessment of where its wood furniture is coming from and whether the wood is legal and well-managed. Once the assessment is completed, Wal-Mart has committed to eliminating wood from illegal and unknown sources within five years. The company reports that it also will eliminate wood from forests that are of critical importance due to their environmental, socio-economic, biodiversity or landscape values and that aren’t well-managed.

The world’s largest retailer also wants to make its sources for jewelry more transparent, starting with a new line of baubles called Love, Earth.

Through a collaboration with Conservation International, the materials for Love, Earth will be traceable online from mine to store so that customers can see that the precious metals and stones used come from socially responsible mining operations. The criteria for the new line will take into account the environment as well as human rights issues.

The mid-term goal: to have 10 percent of Wal-Mart’s jewelry meet these new sustainability standards by 2010.

Read more about WWF’s work on sustainable forestry.

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