LONDON, (Reuters) – Deep in the world’s tropical  rainforests, workers are hammering thousands of barcodes into  hardwood trees to help in the fight against illegal logging,  corruption and global warming.

The plastic tags, like those on supermarket groceries, have  been nailed to a million trees across Africa, southeast Asia and  South America to help countries keep track of timber reserves.

Helveta, the British company behind the technology, says the  barcodes will help firms comply with tough laws on importing  sustainable timber into the United States and Europe.

They could also play a role in fighting deforestation, which  accounts for about a fifth of global emissions of planet-warming  carbon dioxide. The issue will feature in global climate talks  in Copenhagen in December.

“We bring transparency and visibility where historically  that has probably been limited at best,” Patrick Newton,  Helveta’s chief executive officer, told Reuters.

The company, which has just secured another 3 million pounds  ($4.88 million) in funding from investors, has put barcodes on  trees across the world, including in Bolivia, Ghana, Indonesia,  Liberia, Malaysia and Peru.

The computerised system is less prone to fraud than  traditional paper records, carries live data and can help  governments to collect more timber taxes, Newton said.

While the barcodes can’t prevent criminals from chopping  down trees, the system makes it hard for them to process, sell  or export the wood, Newton said.

Officials in remote forests use handheld computers to scan  the tags from the moment a tree is felled to its processing and  export, and the live data is put onto Helveta’s secure database.

Every tree above a certain size in a plantation is given an  individual barcode. When a tree is cut down, another barcode is  attached to the stump and more tags are nailed to the processed  wood to allow customs officials to audit exports at the docks.

Government officials and companies can track individual  trees through the supply chain and view computerised maps of  forests on the database. Timber leaving a forest or factory  without tags will immediately be viewed as illegal, Newton said.

DOUBLE IMPACT

Illegal logging costs timber-producing countries 7 billion  euros ($10 billion) a year in stolen wood, lost taxes and lower  prices for legally-sourced products, the World Bank estimates.

It also takes an environmental toll. Damage to forests  raises the risk of fires, flooding and damage to plants and  trees that act as a “sink” to soak up carbon dioxide, Britain’s  Meteorological Office said in a report last year.

Helveta hopes its technology could help countries taking  part in a proposed scheme to protect the world’s forests as part  of the fight against global warming. That is likely to form part  of any global climate deal agreed in Copenhagen in December. The scheme, called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and  Degradation (REDD), aims to increase forest cover to soak up  carbon dioxide emissions blamed for rising seas, extreme weather  and melting glaciers.

It may include a market-based element where traders buy and  sell REDD credits from forestry projects that lock away carbon.

However, trading based on the number of trees in a forest  needs close auditing if the market is to work, Helveta says.

“The problem with forests is that it is very hard to  validate what is truly out there,” Newton said. “If you are  trying to back that asset…you need to be able to make sure  that what you think is securitised is really there.”