Evaluating the EU’s Fight against Illegal Logging

Twelve years after the European Union launched a plan to tackle illegal logging, independent evaluators are assessing progress and shortcomings. Their findings could contribute to the definition of any future EU forest policy.

The EU launched FLEGT – the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Action Plan – in 2003 in response to rising global concerns about illegal logging and its economic, environmental and social impacts. These impacts include:

• Costing countries around US$15 billion each year through theft of public assets and non-payment of taxes
• Contributing to  illegal deforestation, the second largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions after the energy sector
• Fuelling corruption, conflict over land and resources, and the disempowerment of local communities

The current evaluation of the overall FLEGT AP has sought feedback from stakeholders online and in various public meetings and discussions, including during the annual FLEGT Week conference in Brussels in March.

The mixed feedback from timber importers, exporters, governments and civil society at that meeting reflects the complexity of the challenge, differing stakeholder priorities and the various ways the FLEGT Action Plan seeks to have an impact.

On the positive side, Cath Long from Well Grounded, a non-governmental organisation working with national civil society organisations in Africa, said the broader impact of the FLEGT Action Plan is that it has, “enabled an opening up of discussion about corruption, mismanagement, etc., at government level, which is a very important discussion to be had in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo."

"Pursuing legality can help with sustainability," added Jonathan Zeitlin, Professor of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Amsterdam. "In preparing for the roll-out of the FLEGT licences [in Ghana], it has become necessary to update the forest management plans in all of the concessions, many of which have not been updated since the 1960s. That is a clear sustainability objective.”

Other benefits that have flowed from the FLEGT Action Plan include greater transparency in the forest sector of VPA partner countries, legal and governance reforms, and an unprecedented level of stakeholder participation in decision-making in the sector.

However, the evaluation has also heard stakeholder concerns. One area of criticism was the long time it has taken for VPA partner countries to develop timber legality assurance systems that can issue ‘FLEGT licences’ to verified legal timber.

Logging area in a peat swamp forest

Although Ghana and Indonesia are now testing their timber legality assurance systems and preparing the private sector for FLEGT licensing, this has taken longer than expected.

"This is due to lack of balance between ambition, and realities on the ground and the complexity of the tropical forest situation,” said Dr Freezailah bin Che Yeom, Chairman of the Malaysian Timber Certification Council, and an advisor to the Malaysian government in its FLEGT VPA negotiations with the EU.

“Implementation of the FLEGT VPA requires strong institutions and resources, both human and financial, in partner counties – which are all in short supply in tropical developing countries,” he told the FLEGT evaluation meeting.

Karl Falkenberg, Director-General of DG Environment at the European Commission, acknowledged the delay in FLEGT licensing.

“We haven't yet managed to date to get any shipment accompanied by such licences into Europe,” Mr Falkenberg said. “It proves to be a difficult process because many of those countries have governance at a level that is not really interested all that much in this legality question.”

One of the biggest supporters of the FLEGT Action Plan is FERN, a Dutch NGO that monitors the EU’s forestry work. But FERN also argues that the new challenges in the forest sector, such as an increase in forest conversion for agriculture, are beyond FLEGT’s scope.

“FLEGT is to improve governance in the forestry sector and it's doing that quite well,” said Saskia Ozinga, FERN’s campaign coordinator. “But FLEGT is not adapted to improve governance in the agricultural sector. And as the agricultural sector is by far the largest driver of deforestation you will need something else to tackle that sector.”

A recent report by FERN concluded that, “in 2012 the EU imported roughly a quarter of all the internationally traded soy, beef, leather and palm oil that had been grown on illegally cleared tropical forest land”.

At a meeting at the European Parliament, organised by FERN, Silas Siakor, founder of the Sustainable Development Institute in Liberia, spoke of a perceived “double-standard” whereby European companies are involved in clearing large areas of forest, while the EU negotiates with the government to improve governance in the forestry sector.

“If we are working with the VPA to sustain the forest, to manage the forest better, and then the oil palm companies are allowed to clear-cut the same forest, then it doesn't address the overriding objective that was set for ourselves, which is to protect and manage the forest better.”

Mr Falkenberg took issue however with the FERN report’s emphasis on forest conversion.

"Europe does take in products that are coming from forest conversion but the vast majority of those products are traded locally or regionally,” Mr Falkenberg said. “The European contribution to it is somewhere in the area of 5 to 7 percent – so not clearly the most important of the aspects."

This collaborative piece was drafted with input from Michela Tagliaferri (DEVCO) with support from the capacity4dev.eu Coordination Team. Images courtesy of CIFOR.