Earlier Chatham House conferences on illegal logging have emphasised deforestation, but at the latest, 10 days ago, the social impact of the forest products sector topped the agenda.

Attended by around 150 delegates, including NGO representatives, UK and foreign government officials and a small section of the timber trade, the International Forest Governance and Trade conference covered a diverse range of topics.

Many facets of the timber industry seem to miss the importance of these conferences, where the future of key issues is debated between highly influential members of government, NGOs and other interested parties. As the chairman explained in his opening remarks, “enthusiastic engagement of the private sector has made a real difference”.

Opening the proceedings, parliamentary under-secretary for international development Gareth Thomas talked about his experience of the social impact of illegal logging. In particular he spoke about how uncontrolled felling that he’d witnessed in areas of forest in Cameroon impacted on employment and income for local people. They were not seeing a share of the revenue, he said, and the UK government was taking this seriously, using public procurement to promote legally sourced timber.

Across the EU member states, opinion and actions on illegal logging varied and Mr Thomas said there had been “robust discussions” on the matter during the period of the UK’s EU presidency. Four FLEGT (Forest Law Enforcement of Government & Trade) objectives had been set and three delivered. These included the creation of the Central Point of Expertise on Timber (CPET) in the UK, which had influenced standards.

Mr Thomas said the government was allocating £24m in funding to the issue over the next five years, mainly for EU FLEGT actions. Other priorities included investigating how existing UK law can form the basis of new strategies against illegal logging, encouraging other countries to take action, working with the private sector and developing public procurement policy further.

Voluntary FLEGT

A voluntary EU FLEGT approach is seen as the way forward combined with possible prohibition of timber imports from particular countries. The UK, said Mr Thomas, should also work closely with other major importing countries, such as Canada, the US and Japan, and play its part in asking China to take action. It should also focus on relations with countries in Latin America, the only area without a FLEGT initiative.

Mr Thomas recognised the work of the UK Timber Trade Federation (TTF) and said the government would continue to develop and promote good business practices with the industry. He also thanked the other organisations involved for “campaigning for change”.

During the discussion session Timbmet chief executive Simon Fineman said that, while anti-illegal timber measures taken to date had made real differences in the market, “there is a long way to go”.

It was announced at the event that 25 companies, including Timbmet and Balfour Beatty Construction in the UK, timber and other businesses on the Continent and African suppliers, had developed their own anti-illegal timber trade initiative in conjunction with the government.

“This agreement aims to support progressive companies committed to producing, trading and using independently guaranteed legal and sustainable timber product,” said Mr Fineman. “It will introduce greater transparency into the forestry sector and seek to support progressive companies that are struggling to operate responsibly in competition with illegal operators.”

Mr Fineman said there were still “rogue operators” selling illegal timber “freely” and that some remained “represented by trade associations”

“It is not insignificant that this engagement [on illegal logging] has been with the chief executives and managing directors rather than through the more traditional trade association networks,” he said. “There is a real dynamism to this group of progressive companies that are committed to sustainable forest management. They want to be operating in 100 years’ time. However, producers and importers are all operating in a market that still does not discriminate sufficiently between legal and illegal timber – let alone sustainable.”

&#8220There’s no point creating new legislation when existing laws can do the job”

Duncan Brack, Chatham House

Mr Fineman urged support for companies working towards the right ends.

Certified markets

One company working with an Indonesian plywood producer that has FSC accreditation voiced frustration at the way the market was “swamped with uncertified material”, thereby “leaving responsible suppliers, such as Finnforest and Lathams, struggling to sell this product”.

After a presentation on developments by the EU under the FLEGT programme, which highlighted the small number of EU states committed to this work, the area of social impact was reinforced during questioning, with one delegate stating “poverty is the cost of illegality”.

A Greenpeace spokesperson said progress in forest protection was “unacceptably slow”. It was a “race against time”, the audience was told, against a backdrop of slides of protests and actions Greenpeace has staged to get its message across.

Duncan Brack, from Chatham House, stressed the value of using existing legislation to tackle illegal logging because “there’s no point creating new legislation when existing laws can do the job”. The latter include the Theft Act 1968 – handling stolen goods; civil proceedings, where there is a lighter burden of proof for wrongful possession; customs misdescription, where duty is evaded by disguising the country of origin; and the Money Laundering – Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

However, it still seems that the use of CITES legislation is the best existing legal method of tackling illegal logging.

EAC report

Joan Walley, chair of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee on Sustainable Timber, used the event to announce the findings of its latest report on the issue. The committee said that government procurement policy was “much improved” but also that there was major room for improvement. It said that illegal timber was “still a fact of life in the UK” and criticised the government advisory body CPET for not taking social issues into account in its evaluation of certification schemes. It also criticised the TTF’s Code of Conduct for a lack of “thorough and transparent enforcement”. It concluded that all central and local government should aim to buy only sustainably sourced timber within five years

A Danish team summarised some of the current and future activities on timber in their domestic market, while acknow-ledging that only tropical timbers were included in terms of existing legislation.

This was followed by a panel discussion on CPET involving representation from Defra, ProForest, which operates CPET, and the NGO FERN.

CPET has rapidly become an integral part of the legality/sustainability issue. Funded by Defra and operated by ProForest, it evaluates timber and forestry certification schemes against government procurement criteria, supplies information on government procurement policy and advises public sector buyers and suppliers. It also operates a website and helpline and undertakes stakeholder training on its role in procurement.

Echoing the sentiments of the EAC report, Saskia Ozinga of FERN said that the NGOs also wanted CPET to take greater account of social criteria when evaluating certification schemes as proof of timber sustainability. Once again, there were clear signals that social impact was now the big agenda, with some NGOs pressing for CPET to withdraw approval from any certification schemes that did not have this area sufficiently covered. The industry has been warned!