Illegal Logging Update Meeting
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18th Illegal Logging Update and Stakeholder Consultation Chatham House, 10 St. James’s Square, London 20th – 21st June 2011 Summary Report OVERVIEW Over 200 participants attended the Eighteenth Illegal Logging Update and Stakeholder Consultation, which took place at Chatham House on 20th – 21st June 2011. The following sessions were held: Day 1: Session 1: Forest Certification Keynote speech Session 2: EU Timber regulation Session 3: The FLEGT Regulation / The Liberian VPA Session 4: Central African Republic‟s VPA Day 2: Session 5: A panel discussion: what are the best options for management of the world‟s remaining forests? Session 6: Legality in the agricultural sector: lessons from FLEGT? Session 7: Indonesia The following report summarises the presentations made at the meeting and the key points raised. The PowerPoint presentations are also available from the webpage for this meeting: http://illegal-logging.info/item_single.php?it_id=227&it=event The meeting was organised with funding kindly provided by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the European Forest Institute (EFI), the ACP FLEGT Support Programme through the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Centre for International Development and Training (CIDT) at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. The views reported in this document are those expressed by participants at the meeting and are not necessarily those of Chatham House. SESSION I: Forest certification Chair: Alison Hoare, Chatham House This session included presentations from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), PEFC International and the Environmental Change Institute of University of Oxford. FSC described the growth of forest certification and the parallel development of initiatives being taken by consumer countries and industry to eliminate illegal wood. FSC welcomes efforts to ensure legality, but sees this as only a first step as it does not ensure the protection of the social and ecological values of forests. FSC certification does, however, provide evidence of compliance with legality. In the context of the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR), FSC has a number of objectives that it intends to meet by the end of 2011. Firstly, it aims to ensure that both FSC and Controlled Wood certified timber meet the Regulation‟s requirements by clarifying the scope in the Controlled Wood standards and by incorporating VPA requirements into FSC National Standards, thereby avoiding unnecessary duplication. Secondly, it will strive to ensure that FSC certified wood is accepted as meeting due diligence requirements, by expanding existing information requirements for certification to the whole chain of custody. Thirdly, it intends to go beyond the basic tracing requirements defined by the EUTR for traders, by developing a new Online Traceability Platform to strengthen chain of custody traceability and to support due diligence measures. Finally, FSC intends to work with existing certification bodies to enable them to gain recognition as Monitoring Organisations, as defined under the EUTR. FSC is also developing a Modular Approach Program, to be in place by the end of 2011, for moving forests from a base of a new FSC legality verification (appropriate to meet EUTR and US Lacey Act requirements) to full certification. FSC sees the introduction of a legality verification standard as a means to increase the area of tropical forests under certification, as very few are currently certified. It will, however, be made clear that legality verification is not a sufficient end goal. The presentation from PEFC outlined its vision for forest certification. Whilst acknowledging the potential value of stepwise approaches, PEFC believes that as an organisation committed to sustainable forest management it would not want to „lower the bar‟, and that such a move would confuse the market. Therefore, its approach has been to adopt a number of measures to stimulate the demand for certified products while also working to increase supply through, for example, building capacity and developing national certification schemes. This is a particular challenge in many tropical countries where governance is weak, civil society is not organised and certification has yet to be established. PEFC adopted revised standards in 2010, including standards on sustainable forest management and chain of custody. The new measures relating to sustainable forest management include: prohibiting forest conversion to other land uses; excluding plantations established by forest conversion; recognising FPIC (Free, Prior and Informed Consent), ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, and the UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples Rights; requiring consultation with stakeholders; and clarifying compliance with legal requirements. This final requirement provides synergy with VPA definitions of legality. Revision of the chain of custody standard has resulted in the inclusion of social, health and safety requirements. This requires an organisation to demonstrate its commitment to these requirements, which include: the freedom of workers to associate; a ban on forced labour; respecting a minimum legal working age; equal opportunities; and good working conditions. 2 PEFC is working with a range of partners on a number of international projects that either build demand for certified products or increase capacity for sustainable management of forests. One of these initiatives is working at a global level up to the Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012 to promote sustainable forest management and certification. The PEFC General Assembly in 2010 launched the Rio Forest Certification Declaration, which sets out a common set of 10 principles for stakeholders to advance sustainable forest management. The principles seek to maximise the benefits that forest certification can offer to society, and include environmental, social and economic elements, each with associated actions, building on the aims of sustainable development and development goals set out in previous international declarations. The Declaration has been opened for signatures. PEFC believes these principles can reinvigorate the certification movement by building a common framework and aspirations amongst stakeholders, and by working in a more cooperative and focused manner. The third presentation in this session, from the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University examined the links between certification and REDD+. It could be assumed that these two approaches would complement each other. For example, REDD+ is intended to be applicable across the whole tropical forest landscape, so mass certification could be addressed more quickly through a mechanism such as REDD+. Further, REDD+ is supported by governments in consumer and producer countries and has attracted large amounts of money, both of which could benefit certification. On the other hand, forest certification serves to link global and local goals for sustainable forest management into concrete action on the ground, while also linking production and consumption, which REDD+ does not. Certification also provides a framework which encompasses governance, standards, monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), and chain of custody. Looking first at governance, certification could provide REDD+ with an alternative platform to negotiate disputed issues, set goals that exceed those of governments, and link legality verification and REDD+, while REDD+ could provide certification with additional financial resources. Currently, there are a range of separate initiatives to certify REDD+ projects, while certification standards and processes are also being incorporated into intergovernmental and national REDD+ policies. Focusing on standards, certification could address current gaps in REDD+, such as addressing forest degradation and lowering carbon emissions through reduced impact logging, and environmental and social safeguards, for which there are specific performance criteria under certification. There is a clear link between certification and REDD+ where MRV is concerned as certification could provide a ready-made, independent accreditation and assessment process. There is a less obvious link with chain of custody, and work needs to be done on this, however, labelling (to indicate chain of custody) could provide a way for consumers to support REDD+. There is an opportunity for REDD+ to work with a number of certification schemes, covering for example, carbon, agriculture, cattle and fair trade, so enabling consumers to support REDD+ through their purchases. By working with schemes from a number of different sectors, a wider range of issues would be covered under REDD+. There are a number of challenges to improved linkages between certification and REDD+. Firstly, they are both controversial processes, with some NGOs opposed to forest certification organisations expanding their remit to include carbon. Secondly, within forest certification alone there are a number of competing standards, of variable stringency and some of which have proved temporary, and there is little documented evidence on their environmental and social impacts. Thirdly, certification costs are high. Fourthly, there is currently a low level of trust in 3 REDD+ and certification schemes amongst many stakeholders. Finally, within both certification and REDD+ there is a risk that they could overly focus on more easily measurable values such as carbon, rather than environmental and social values. In spite of these challenges, there are already moves to link certification