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Above left: Logs at a Liberian sawmill Above right: The Amazon PHOTO: NASA
ensure long-term forest maintenance and growth.
“Countries putting those reforms in place should be rewarded with enhanced trade benefits, which would attract investment to industries and supply chains which depend on retaining forests as forest and constantly improving their value – notably timber production,” says the TTA.
It maintains that the groundwork for such a strategy has already been laid in a series of international Forest Law Enforcement and Governance (FLEG) conferences and in the UK/EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Action Plan, with its Voluntary Partnership Agreements (FLEGT VPAs) with tropical supplier countries and FLEGT licensing of timber exports.
“Designed specifically to stop illegal logging and its associated trade, FLEGT also provides a blueprint for legal and sustainable management of other commodity supply chains, which are currently implicated in illegal deforestation,” says the TTA. A deficiency in the FLEGT policy framework, however, is that it is only recognised by EU countries and the UK, with FLEGT licensed products only granted preferential access to their markets. “This gives it limited market leverage when China, Japan, the Middle East, and US are today such major consumers of tropical timber products,” says the TTA. “What’s needed is a global solution; an over-arching international legal framework for tropical forest and forest product supply chain governance and management.” The Accord calls for:
• Effective governance and legal compliance throughout the supply chain
in timber-producing countries and within international trade to deliver positive outcomes for the future of forests
• National multi-stakeholder processes that bring together government, civil
society and private sector in tropical
forest countries to frame national laws and standards and ensure fairness and legitimacy, as well as credibility and enforceability
• Incentivisation of effective forest governance and responsible forest trade by
offering support and encouraging foreign direct investment in added-value tropical forest industries
• International business and consumer markets to commit to sourcing tropical
forest products and material only from legal sources that ensure the sustainability of those resources into the future
• Simplification and rationalisation of tropical forest legality and sustainability
product standards and communication.
The TTA’s proposed new framework for the international tropical timber trade would:
• Set principles and processes by which future international trade could recognise,
incentivise, and support strong governance and sustainable forestry in tropical producer countries
• Be based on and recognise each country’s own nationally determined norms and
standards, underpinned by independent verification
• Define a process for these national rules-based systems to be internationally
recognised as a system of defined legality and sustainability, encouraging governance support and strong global collaboration
• Encourage consumer markets to adopt policies and regulations that promote
responsible trade with countries with strong forest governance and discourage trade from those which cannot demonstrate and verify good forest governance
• Incentivise countries to implement effective forest governance by giving their forest
products industries preferential ‘green lane’ access to international markets and trade, backed by communications and promotion throughout the supply chain
Above right: The Congo Forest PHOTO: CIFOR
www.ttjonline.com | November/December 2021 | TTJ
• Recognise the importance of micro and small to medium-sized enterprises in
tropical producer countries through international investment and support.
This new approach, says the TTA, will require an international secretariat to drive it, among the roles of which would be to “help direct finance for countries to enact reform”. Finally, it calls on global leaders at and following COP26 to commit to this overhaul of tropical timber trade now. “If we don’t act, the destruction and degradation of tropical forests will continue. But there is an alternative, and it’s set out in the Tropical Timber Accord,” it says. “We, acting as the global business community dependent on strong governance and sustainable management of forests, call on global leaders to work with our industry and other stakeholders to take action to achieve it starting with agreement to do so at COP26.
“There is no time to lose.” ■
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