Environmental NGO Fern has urged the EU not to abandon Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) licensing following the release of critical initial findings from the European Commission’s (EC) recent Fitness Check of the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) and FLEGT. These state that both have failed to achieve key aims and their criticism was further highlighted in a FERN webinar presentation by Hugo Maria-Schally of the EC DG Environment.
In a later webinar, hosted by the FLEGT Independent Market Monitor (IMM) (https:// bit.ly/3w0Z5m1), TTF managing director David Hopkins said FLEGT was essentially about improving forest and timber sector governance, which was fundamental to any effort to maintain forests and their climate regulating capacity. But, he said, a weakness of the EU – and UK supported – timber legality assurance initiative was that it didn’t seem to have anybody specifically focused on “pushing it forward and trying to make it work” and he suggested its management was “possibly in the wrong place”.
The EC Fitness Check did come up with some positive findings, including that FLEGT, had broadened stakeholder engagement in supplier country forest sector policy making and improved governance. The EUTR, meanwhile, had focused the timber trade on keeping supply chains “clean”.
However, preliminary conclusions were also that there was “no evidence that FLEGT Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) with supplier countries [which are so far all tropical] have contributed to reducing illegal logging or consumption of illegal wood in the EU”.
The VPA process, which ultimately leads to FLEGT licensing, was also described as slow and costly, with only Indonesia, so far, having completed it and started licensing.
Criticism of the EUTR included that it was complex for importer operators and competent authorities (CAs) to assess illegality risk and difficult to prove breaches in court.
Suggestions for ways forward from the current FLEGT approach included “alternative support mechanisms for partner countries without the elements that don’t work – [that is] licensing in a trade agreement”.
Speaking at FERN’s recent webinar ‘Due diligence based regulation for forest risk commodities’, Mr Schally said that, at a time when the EU is focused under its Green Deal on achieving deforestation and forest-degradation- free supply chains across the board, an idea is that FLEGT VPAs give way to broader partnerships with forest supplier countries encompassing the range of forest risk commodities. That includes beef, cocoa, soya and palm oil as well as wood. “It is also clear that we are moving from [assured] legality to sustainability,” he said.
In its response (https://bit.ly/3AaqwNE), FERN said the suggestion the EC will axe FLEGT licensing has been met with “alarm and a sense of betrayal” by civil society in VPA countries.
“Dropping FLEGT VPAs would likely increase pressure on forests from illegal logging and undermine the EU’s commitments under its Green Deal,” it said.
It added that, rather than abandoning FLEGT VPAs, the EC should “place pressure on producer countries to resolve political issues that are slowing [FLEGT licensing] being finalised”.
“They should also strengthen EUTR enforcement, so illegal timber stops getting into the EU,” said FERN.
A report from the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), also contradicted the EU’s initial Fitness Check findings, saying that FLEGT had, in fact, contributed to a reduction in illegal logging in Indonesia, Ghana and Cameroon (https://bit.ly/3qCsEZV).
In the IMM webinar, ‘Tropical trade trends and FLEGT profile’, Mr Hopkins described the TTF’s government-backed FLEGT communication campaign. To date this has included multi-media information and e-learning programmes and last year’s ‘Conversations about Climate Change’, a design competition to target the specifier audience, featuring timber from FLEGT VPA countries.
The TTF had received funding from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to continue the campaign to the end of 2022 and the next outcome will be a six-week exhibition and presentations project in London, including the release of a Timber Manifesto. The project, to coincide with the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow this November, will also address the technical potential and environmental benefits of timber in construction and other topics around forest and timber’s carbon and climate merits, but forest governance and FLEGT will be a core focus. The event will be backed with extensive digital communications to reach as wide an audience as possible, notably delegates at the UN event.
Without credible systems of forest governance, said Mr Hopkins, deforestation issues will never be tackled; forest countries will increasingly struggle to attract inward investment and forest management will deteriorate.
FLEGT, he said, can be the corner stone of a strong, independently monitored legal framework for forestry, notably in the tropics, helping attract trade and finance, so incentivising more investment in the forests. But the system needed a specific organisation and individual to take charge and the question of how it should best develop addressed.
“The EU should recognise that they haven’t done enough to push [FLEGT] forward,” he said. “They should either step up to the plate or admit Europe is not the principal driver or influence in the tropical trade it was and that it needs help. FLEGT [management] is possibly in the wrong place. You may need to involve an international secretariat, with others, including China and the tropical producers themselves, sitting round the table to make this whole thing work.”
