American Hardwood Assured

An assurance of deforestation-free and legally compliant American hardwoods, helping to maintain one of the largest and most diverse forest areas in the world

Explore the AHA Legal and Deforestation-free platform

The American Hardwood Assured (AHA) platform provides U.S. based companies exporting U.S. hardwood products with a straightforward procedure to quickly prepare standardised AHA Statements for their export consignments.

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Safeguarding the future of the forests

American Hardwood Assured (AHA), an initiative by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), provides an effective and verifiable process to assure end users that U.S. hardwood is both legally sourced and deforestation-free. AHA delivers this assurance at scale using the latest remote sensing and wood provenance identification technologies combined with expert jurisdictional risk assessment.

Legality risk assessments

In AHA’s platform, the risk of illegal harvesting is assessed against the “Framework for Jurisdictional Risk Assessment (JRA) of Legal Compliance of Hardwood Production in the USA”. Each assessment is carried out at state level by independent experts appointed by AHA and is subject to additional third-party scrutiny prior to endorsement by AHA. Assessments aim to cover all states producing commercial volumes of hardwood sawlogs in the United States. All AHA-endorsed state risk assessments, both the full assessment report and endorsement summary, are publicly accessible and can be downloaded at the AHA JRA Results page.

AHA JRA Framework

AHA JRA Results

News

AHA to integrate with EUDR Information System

The European Commission delivered on its platform for companies to provide EUDR data by launching the online “Information System” in January 2025. A key objective of American Hardwood Assured (AHA) is to allow U.S. hardwood exporters to quickly and efficiently provide their EU customers with the data they need to enter onto the EU system.

Comprehensive independent assessment confirms negligible illegality risk in U.S. hardwood sector

Probably the most comprehensive series of assessments of the risk of illegal harvesting ever undertaken anywhere in the world has just been completed by American Hardwood Assured (AHA).

Should regulators demand assurance of good forestry practice at a plot or jurisdictional level?

American Hardwood Assured (AHA) is developing an approach to good forestry assurance which can help resolve one of the key debates over the most effective concept: should assessment be at a plot or jurisdictional level?

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AHEC's role in the AHA

AHEC believes there is an opportunity to develop robust jurisdictional risk-based forms of sustainability verification for hardwoods sourced from non-industrial forest owners. Innovations in technologies in the fields of earth observation, plant-chemistry-based provenance identification, AI and data management, and communication are providing new opportunities to develop very robust and timely risk assessment and chain of custody verification.

In supporting AHA, AHEC’s objective is to ensure U.S. hardwoods are universally recognised as legally harvested, deforestation-free, and climate positive in international markets through a mechanism that is cost-effective and equitable for U.S. hardwood exporters and their suppliers, and which acknowledges environmental benefits and responds to sustainability challenges specific to the U.S. hardwood sector.

AHA was initiated by AHEC, the leading international trade association of the American hardwood industry. All AHEC programs are run though the joint efforts of the U.S. hardwood industry and the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

While AHEC has initiated AHA, other interests from amongst the wider potential stakeholder group are expected to support the program and aid its transition to an independent body with its own income streams.