Legal tropical timber products have become unequivocal consumer demands the world over. The European Union Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade process (FLEGT) is largely about meeting this demand by improving the supply of legal timber.
FLEGT also represents a significant breakthrough in the global battle to protect diminishing forest resources, marking an unprecedented collaboration to tackle the illegal timber trade between producing and consuming countries – in this case the EU.
But it isn’t just the EU taking steps to this end via FLEGT and its corresponding anti-illegal timber EU Timber Regulation (EUTR). Other countries are clamping down on the illegal trade, including the US through the Lacey Act Amendment and Australia with its Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill and Green Purchasing Law.
So FLEGT reflects a shift in consumer mentality worldwide, which, if it continues, will increasingly restrict market access for those in the forest sector that fail to demonstrate legality and improve governance.
There are also trends to substitute forest products with synthetic rivals if the former are not shown to be legal, adding incentive for good private forest sector to support a level playing field by adopting legality assurance measures, or risk the whole sector losing out.
But by supporting initiatives such as FLEGT, and its associated Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA) with supplier countries, this unabated growth in demand for more socially and environmentally benign products could actually prove to the forest sector’s advantage. This is even more the case given that recent financial crises, and growing alarm over climatic change, have combined to increase emphasis on building a green economy.
The FLEGT/VPA processes assure the legal, environmental and social credentials of timber, which are essential to ensure that forests maintain their global market value and incentivise maintenance of intact, productive forests long-term. This is ultimately the objective of industry and serves the needs of all stakeholders. It is also a promise to preserve vital resources for the benefit of future generations.
The last 10 years of FLEGT have also seen a growing number of national processes driven by governments to address their forest legality and governance challenges.
Many of these result from a desire for better forest management, pressure from local stakeholders for more inclusive processes and the massive demands that their own domestic economies are putting on forest resources.
In many countries where the FLEGT Programme of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations operates, domestic and regional markets are outpacing growth in global markets.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nation’s FLEGT Programme, now entering its third phase, is adapting to this evolving environment. It continues to support VPA processes, but has also added components to back emerging national level processes in a more focused manner and includes more targeted support for private sector organizations.
The Programme is demand-driven: governments, private sector organizations and civil society approach us to provide assistance in addressing needs that they define locally. This means the support we offer varies depending on country and context. There is no "one-size fits all" paradigm for stakeholders. However, all approaches have common aims: improving legality, forest governance and in turn facilitating access to markets, with the hope of providing long-term social, economic and environmental benefits to tropical timber-producing countries. For more information: Robert.Simpson@fao.org
