Plenary 1

From Bali to Beijing: Lessons Learnt and remaining challenges from a decade of work on Forest Law Enforcement and Governance in East Asia and the Pacific

Plenary session 1 aims to present experiences and lessons learnt from countries in implementing FLEG or FLEGT during the 10 years since its declaration in 2001, with special highlights on performance of the implementation, key factors influencing the performance, stakeholders involved in the implementation, as well as the remaining challenges that need to be addressed.

The session specifically addressed the following key questions:

What have been the impacts of efforts to combat illegal logging on forest policy, timber markets, forest industries and forest-dependent communities over the past 10 years?
What has been the experience of producer and processor countries in developing legality standards and verification systems? What are the main outstanding challenges in reducing illegal logging?
What has been the experience of consumer countries in developing and implementing policies to limit the flow of illegal timber into their markets over the past decade? What are the main outstanding challenges in reducing illegal timber markets?

Is the situation getting better or worse in limiting illegal logging and its markets? What is the extent of the change and the main causes for it?

Notes from session

Break-out Groups

Breakout group discussion is aimed at deepening our understanding of shared experiences and exploring opportunities for improvement and collaborative action from the perspectives of consumer, producer and transformer countries.

Group 1 – Consumer Countries
Key questions to be discussed

How successful are consumer countries in ascertaining the legal origins of imported timber? How do they monitor and how much illegal timber is still coming in?
What is the impact of the new standards on the markets in consumer countries for volumes, prices and demand (beyond demand generated by public procurement policies)? How long will it take retailers to comply with the new regulations? Are there programmes to increase demand for certified timber (beyond procurement policies)?
Do new regulations improve the market for domestic manufacturers of wood products?

Notes from session

Group 2 – Producer Countries
Key questions to be discussed

What is the experience of producer countries in building legality standards and verification systems? What are the main outstanding challenges?
How do producer countries differentiate and ensure legality of timber for domestic use versus certified timber for international markets?
Is the situation getting better or worse in limiting illegal logging? What is the extent of the change and the main causes for it?
Do new regulations on timber result in barriers to entry for small and medium enterprises or community logging operations? If so, how could such barriers be mitigated?

Notes from session

Group 3 – Transformer Countries
Key questions to be discussed

How successful are transformer countries in ensuring that the timber entering their production facilities is legal? How successful are they in monitoring and verifying legality and what challenges do they face in building that capacity? What are the difficulties in controlling legality and certified timber entering these countries?
Are consumer countries’ regulations a barrier to their products?
Is the situation getting better or worse in controlling the legality of timber trade?

Notes from session