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Trade & environment Case study: International Timber trade

Trade & environment Case study: International Timber trade. Trade & environment Case study: International Timber trade. Trends in High Risk timber imports from EU FLEGT countries, China and other tropical Africa. Forest destruction roughly 20% of global GHG emissions.

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Trade & environment Case study: International Timber trade

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  1. Trade & environment Case study: International Timber trade Trade & environment Case study: International Timber trade

  2. Trends in High Risk timber imports fromEU FLEGT countries, China and other tropical Africa

  3. Forest destruction roughly 20% of global GHG emissions. • Illegal logging  serious env. and social damage. • Costing governments an estimated $10 billion every year in lost revenues. • It is estimated that up to 50 per cent of tropical hardwood imported into Europe is from illegal sources Sources: EC briefing notes 2007, WWF UK 2005

  4. Initatives to combat illegal timber tradeinternational agreementsregional agreements: EU- FLEGT –Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Tradenational legislationnon-legal maesures Cortesy of Johannes Enssle M.Sc. Global Change Management

  5. WTO Debating FLEGT in the Bundestag

  6. EU FLEGT Action Plan • EU programme to combat illegal logging and trade by influencing both demand and supply. • Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) with producer countries: • Governance reforms • Measures to regulate and control timber trade • Measures that verify legality of products • Measures to increase demand for legal timber: • Public procurement policies • Private sector initiatives, eg Timber Assoc. Codes • Financing and investment, eg lending criteria • Awareness raising: Forum C.Africa, China, C.America

  7. FLEGT Action Plan: in more detail Focuses on 6 broad areas: • Support to timber-producing countries • Activities to promote trade in legal timber • Promoting public procurement policies • Support for private sector initiatives • Financing and investment • Use of existing legislative instruments or adoption of new legislation to support the Plan

  8. Voluntary Partner Agreements (VPA) • binding bilateral agreement between the EU and a Partner Country • improving governance: • measures to build capacity, • improve control and monitoring, • enhance transparency • support measures to mitigate any negative impacts on poor people • Export licenses for the EU based on legality verification • Secured and improved EU market access

  9. Legality Assurance System (LAS ) • FLEGT licensing requires a Legality Assurance System (LAS) which has 5 components • A definition of legally-produced timber • A system to verify compliance with definitions • A system to trace products from forest to export • A licensing system for exports • Independent monitoring of all components

  10. EU FLEGT licensing scheme: current negotiations • VPAs currently restricted to: Malaysia, Indonesia, Ghana, Cameroon and Kongo-Brazaville • But only with Malaysia negotiations entered into an official phase of negotiation

  11. Critiques from NGOs • FLEGT does not prevent illegal timber going via third countries such as China and ending up in the EU. • FLEGT does not cover pulp or paper - responsible for a significant proportion of the EU's timber imports. • WWF is calling for EU-wide legislation to prohibit the importation of illegal timber into the EU, regardless of the country of origin. (WWF 2005)

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