Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) and Private certification

1. VoluntaryPartnershipAgreement (VPA) and Private certification Dénis KOULAGNA KOUTOU Secretary General Ministry of Forestry and WildlifeCameroon

2. Guidelines • Evolution of private certification in Cameroon • What about private certifications • Measures taken for Certificate of Legality • Process followed for Private Certification schemes recognition • Case study in Cameroon • Output of the process until now • Chain of custody constraints • Next steps • Conclusions of the study

3. Evolution of managedforest Cameroon production forest area: 8,4 Millions Ha Without Management Plan With Management Plan

4. Situation of the certification SustainableMgtcertified FSC 956.000 ha FSC (OLB) 12 in 2012 about 54 % of the area of FMU with MP are underprivate certification 14 TLTV by SGS 31 1.102.000 ha TLTV CertifiedLegality 13 OLB by Bureau Veritas 45 900.000 ha OLB only 3 FSC-CW Managed plan VLC by Smartwood-Rainforest 1 FMU

5. Actual situation • 12 Forest Management Unit are sustainable management (FSC) • 31 Forest Management Unit are certifiedlegality (14 TLTV from SGS, 13 OLB from Bureau Veritas, 3 FSC-CW, et 1 VLC fromSmarthwood-Rainforest) • Certification operators are accredited by FSC for sustainablemanagement; theydeveloptheirownlegality standards • 3 titles out of 8 are not covered by private certification • Council Forest standard existwith FSC but no certificate has been yetdelivered

6. What about private certification in VPA According to the Legality Assurance System • Certification bodies have to be approved for each standard they used • Entities holding a recognized private certificate could use it for their request of certificate of legality • Recognized private certification is not equivalent to Certificate of Legality and of course not to FLEGT Export License • Not all of Private Certificate are eligible (Example: Chain of Custody’s Certificate is not eligible)

7. Measurestaken by Cameroon Arrêté 0004/MINFOF Febr 7th 2013 • List of documents to be provided to comply with VPA legality matrix (art 10) • The operators owning a recognized private certification for their titles could get a Certificate of Legality if an authentified copy of their valid private certificate from an recognized certification body is provided (art 15) • All operators have to provide the Cameroonian official Forest Information System SIGIF with the required documents (art 12 & 13) Minfof internal procedures to analyse all demand of Certificate of Legality

8. Process followed in Cameroon for private certification schemes recognition • Definition and validation of the evaluation methodology • Analysis process by a Consultant : • Identification of existing private certification schemes • Request from certification bodies operating in Cameroon their local used certification schemes standard and audit methodology • Assessment of certification schemes standard • Assessment of certification bodies audit methodology • 3 restitutions of the consultant findings during the process involving private sector and advisors • Validation workshop

9. What the MINFOF Case Study shows • Some private certificate are issued even if all criteria are not 100% verified • Some private certificate are issued with a multiannual validity period • Some private certificate are issued for a group of forest entities meaning that all of them may not be fully audited.Some time, the certificate does not show clearly wish entities of the group is certified.  Even if some private certification standards are supposed to be legally above criteria, the certification bodies and the procedures used need to be recognized.

10. Output • List of private certified entities/titles • List of checkers that are not always fulfilled when issuing a private certificate • List of certificates that should be considered for analysis • Evaluation grid for certification scheme standard compliance verification • Evaluation grid for audit methodology/process compliance verification • Procedure proposal to implement the verification • Cameroon did not yet analyse all certification schemes but prepared the official process in a participative way • The certification bodies have to submit their request with the scheme standard and procedures they use

11. Chain of Custody Constraints • Temporary procedures are in place to allow the Minister in charge of Forest to issue Certificates of Legality if all required document and verifications has be done (Art 16 from Arrêté0004/MINFOF Febr 7th 2013) • The issuing of FLEGT License is not effective until the Chain of custody, linked to the SIGIF, is operational

12. Nextsteps • All requests of Certificate of Legality are analysed by a CNS (National Monitoring Committee) once a year after technical analysis in MINFOF and decision is validated by the CCS (Joint Monitoring Committee) • Cameroon recognised private legality/durability certification schemes will be published yearly by the Ministry with the evaluation grid • In the mean time, all operator (holding private certificate or not) could address their demand for Certificate of Legality to the Minister • The MINFOF will recognize, after checking, their compliance with its indicators of the verification of legality. • It should help the operator to provide evidence to their client in Europe that have to deal with Due diligence.

13. Conclusions of the case study • MINFOF consultant recommends to be really cautious when issuing Certificate of Legality to entities holding private certificates because of all the difference identified • The evaluation grids with all VPA criteria and the question the evaluator should ask himself have to be carefully used by the operator and by the service in charge of controlling before advising the CNS and CCS to issue a legality certificate

14. Thanks for your attention