• What are VPAs
• Background Information on VPAs
• How will they work?
• Why legality, not sustainability?
• Four serious loopholes
• Key Principles for VPAs

There is increasing recognition that the EU, as a significant consumer of wood products, shares responsibility with timber-producing countries to tackle illegal logging and its associated trade. However, there is currently no practical mechanism for identifying and excluding illegal timber from the EU market.

The FLEGT Action Plan therefore proposes the development of Voluntary Partnership Agreements between the EU and individual timber-producing countries (FLEGT Partner Countries). Legally produced timber exported to the EU would be identified by means of licences issued in Partner Countries. Timber originating in a FLEGT Partner Country and arriving at an EU point of import without such a permit would be denied entry. To enable EU customs authorities to exclude illegal timber, and thereby make Partnership Agreements effective, a new EU regulation is required.

Back to top.

Bilateral and regional approaches, such as the VPAs, are a key step in the fight against illegal logging. The negotiations of these agreements must bring together all interested parties in producer and consumer countries for developing solutions and promoting responsible forest management.

To be effective and legitimate, we believe that these partnership agreements, must be:

• developed through mechanisms of broad engagement with civil society organisations and favourable  towards community forestry;
• aimed at creating public accountability and transparency in the management of natural resources;  
• based on a proper assessment of all partnership country's national forest and related laws (including environmental laws, human rights laws, land tenure laws and others).

Only once there is agreement in the producer country on the process and subsequently on what constitutes illegal timber, can an effective licensing system, identifying legal timber, be set up. We believe that for VPAs to be effective improved governance must be at their heart. In this we support the opinion of the Council, which would like the VPAs to be instruments to:

"strengthen land tenure and access rights especially for marginalised communities, strengthen effective participation of all stakeholders, notably of non state actors and indigenous peoples in policy making, increase transparency and reduce corruption".

---

It is essential that potential partner countries are demonstrably committed to the equitable, transparent and sustainable management of forests and that this commitment is, or will be, reflected in the national legislative framework. It is equally important that the EU ensures that VPA negotiations and further reforms are based on meaningful public consultation including local and indigenous communities. VPAs that are not widely supported by civil society groups are doomed to fail.

However, current pre-negotiations for VPAs do not seem to focus on governance or legal reform but rather on legitimising current trade flows. The EU's choice to approach the problem of illegality via the VPAs will only be effective as long as the VPAs will strengthen participatory processes, and lead to the enforcement of fair laws, which respect indigenous rights, and deliver true sustainable forest management. Such an approach will require a comprehensive legal review and, potentially, legislative reform.

Back to top.
A key feature of such agreements is a timber licensing scheme under which each country that enters a voluntary agreement (a 'partner country') will implement a system to verify that its wood product exports to the EU had been legally produced. The EU's border control authorities would allow imports only of licensed products from partner countries. The basic elements are:

• A definition of legally-produced timber that sets out all the laws and regulations that must be complied with in the production process.
• A secure chain of custody that tracks timber from the forest where it was harvested through different owners and stages in processing to the point of export.
• A verification system to provide reasonable assurance that the requirements of the definition have been met for each export consignment.
• The issuance of licences to validate the results of legality verification and chain of custody.
• Independent monitoring of the whole system to assure its credibility and to provide transparency.

Back to top.
In many countries, there is a substantial gap between current forest exploitation practices and sustainable forest management by any definition. Thus, an immediate requirement for sustainability has proven not only difficult to define, but beyond the abilities of many forest owners and managers to meet. Legal compliance, which forms an essential component of many sustainable forestry definitions, should be a more achievable target, and a first step in progressing towards sustainable forest management.

Back to top.

There are four serious loopholes in the VPAs and licensing schemes

1. Reach. A legality-licensing scheme lies at the heart of the proposed VPAs. This is a system designed to identify legal timber and timber products and to license them for export to Europe. Unlicensed timber from partner countries will be denied entry into Europe and those involved in the illicit trade will be liable for prosecution. Such a system will only have a significant impact on the level of illegal logging in partner countries if it is rolled out across the entire country, to include all exports and the domestic timber trade.

2. Laundering. If the partner country has no national legislation prohibiting the importation of illegally logged timber and timber products, timber logged illegally in a non-partner country could enter Europe legally via the partner country, accompanied by a valid legality licence. Importation into Europe would be legal, despite the timber's illegal origins. Effectively, the timber would have been laundered. In order to close this loophole, either the partner countries should amend domestic legislation to prohibit the importation of illegally logged timber and timber products or the regulation itself should be amended so that the FLEGT licensing scheme is limited to timber harvested in the partner country concerned. Option 1 is our preferred option.

3. Circumvention. The issue of circumvention has been discussed at length, but remains unresolved. VPAs will only cover direct trade between the VPA country and the EU Member States. Timber and wood products imported via a third party country such as China are not addressed. This is a serious omission of the current VPA system.

4. Product coverage. Finally and of great concern to our organisations is the fact that the current VPA proposal does not address the imports of pulp, paper and furniture. When negotiating a VPA the EU should ensure all forest products will be included.
Back to top.
We believe that the VPAs must:

• Involve civil society in law-making and in participatory forest management with the aim of improving forest governance, enforcement mechanisms, and tackling corruption; stimulate forest law reform and ensure that truly sustainable forest management is in place.

• Establish a sustainable and fair trade regime, including the implementation of a credible licensing system guaranteeing consumers that wood products sold in the European market are coming from legal and sustainable sources.
  

To achieve these objectives, we call on the EU and partner countries to fully comply with the following principles for each partnership agreement:

• The use of Articles 175 and 179 (environment) of the EC Treaty, rather than Article 133 (commercial policy) as the legal basis for the VPA negotiation;
• Incorporate partnership principles committing producer countries to a time-bound action programme which will deliver socially and ecologically responsible forest management, halt forest biodiversity loss, promote social equity and contribute to poverty alleviation. These principles should include:
• A clear process that will ensure effective and meaningful participation of civil society, including local communities and Indigenous Peoples' Organisations, consisting of democratically elected representatives of these groups in the negotiation and implementation of the VPAs;
• A review of all forest-related laws to identify weaknesses and social and environmental injustices and, where necessary, encourage legislative and policy reform to strengthen environmental and social standards, and to rebalance forest management so it contributes to poverty alleviation and local people's needs;
• The establishment of participatory land use planning/zoning to ensure effective management and sustainable use of natural resources based on: strengthening land tenure and access rights especially for marginalized, rural communities and indigenous peoples; protecting sites of high ecological, cultural and social value; and transparent and open allocation of forest concessions
• Strengthening judicial and administrative authorities, and the fight against corruption, inter alia through supporting civil society oversight mechanisms such as Independent Forest Monitoring, which are indispensable for ensuring public credibility at local and international levels;
• Integrate sustainable forest management and FLEGT into the planning and implementation of the next round of EU Country Strategy Papers and provide adequate funds to build capacity and support the implementation of key reforms.

Back to top.