These messages were delivered at presentations in London last week from representatives of the countries’ timber sectors, embassies and others involved in the FLEGT process.
The separate events, at the America Square Conference Centre and Indonesian Embassy, were held in association with the UK Timber Trade Federation (TTF) and each attended by around 40 delegates, drawn mainly from the trade, but also NGOs.
"They were both very informative and underlined the depth and breadth of efforts involved in FLEGT in supplier countries," said TTF chief executive John White. "In particular, they emphasised that, while FLEGT-licensed timber is held up as the ultimate goal, the true value is in the process itself, what is going on on the ground in terms of establishing watertight legality assurance systems (LAS), chain of custody monitoring and control, and much broader stakeholder involvement in the industry and decision making."
A FLEGT licence will provide a legality ‘passport’ for timber into the EU, exempting it from further EU Timber Regulation legality assurance due diligence by importing ‘operators’. While the initiative has been going 10 years, however, and six countries are at final implementation stage, none have yet been authorised to issue licences, a decision made jointly by supplier governments and the EU.
"There’s some impatience in the UK and rest of the European trade that after such a length of time we still haven’t seen any licensed timber and, to some extent, rightly so," said TTF head of sustainability Anand Punja. "But the FLEGT process is definitely more than just the means to this end. Ultimately the initiative is about delivering better trade governance and building suppliers’ capacity to establish and operate legality assurance and chain of custody systems, and that is what the process has already done in a number of countries."
A key section of Ghana’s event was a presentation by George Kuru of environmental consultancy Ata Marie on the timber tracking software technology that underpins its LAS.
"This is a very impressive system," said Mr White.
Among the speakers for Indonesia were Mariana Lubis, head of the country’s SVLK LAS licence information unit, and Andy Roby, UK co-director of its multi-stakeholder forestry programme. Ms Lubis described the establishment of its licensing framework, while Mr Roby gave an overview of SVLK’s operation.
