Kubu Raya, West Kalimantan. With millions of hectares of forests being cleared each year to make way for palm-oil plantations, even illegal loggers are now starting to see the impact of dwindling rainforests in Indonesia.
Unlike previous years when illegal loggers were spotted with top quality wood, the National Police this year have only been able to seize low quality goods during a series of raids conducted between Nov. 8 and Nov. 26.
Malaysia and the European Union (EU) have made progress in talks on the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA), said Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities, Tan Sri Bernard Giluk Dompok.
However, he said, the different forestry laws in Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak, needed to be ironed out before an agreement could be reached.
We would highly appreciate it if the contributions could be documented and sent to MARD at Tong cuc Lam nghiep, No. 2 Ngoc Ha, Ha Noi; fax 38438793 or email to nguyenminhthuong.vnforest@gmail.com by 1 December 2011.
The REDD+ lobby would do well to learn the lessons of the Uganda land grab and build transparency, anti-corruption measures, conflict resolution into the system from the start, says Davyth Stewart from Global Witness
This brief aims to guide countries in the development of their Legality Definition as part of a Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) process. It is not meant to be prescriptive, but rather describe useful practice based on the experiences and lessons learned from other countries engaged in FLEGT VPA Legality Definition development.
Industrial timber use has provided timber revenue that has helped make timber supply and demand more sustainable in the leading timber producing regions of the world. Sustainable development im-plies not consuming more resources today than we can replace tomorrow, but sustainable forest man-agement implies more than merely a non-declining supply of timber. Forests as a whole provide vital ecosystem services, as important atmospheric carbon sinks for example.
The European Union and the Government of Liberia, which presides over half of the remaining rainforest in West Africa, announced today a landmark agreement to ensure that all Liberian timber products exported from Liberia to the EU are derived from legal sources and that the resulting trade will benefit the Liberian people. EFIs EU FLEGT Facility provided technical support to the preparation, negotiation and implementation of FLEGT Voluntary Partnership Agreement in Liberia.
AOUNDE, Cameroon (18 April, 2011)_The trade in illegally harvested timber provides a living for more than 45,000 people, a major source of income for corrupt officials and not a cent for the state. Follow this 5-part series as I explore Cameroon’s hidden harvest.
I have used pseudonyms to protect the identities of some of the people in Cameroon’s domestic timber industry who were interviewed.
AFTER four years of negotiations, the EU and Indonesia have this week finalised an historic new trade agreement to stem the flow of illegal timber to European markets.
The Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) is the first ever in Asia and will govern a trade estimated to be worth about US$1 billion a year.
MANILA, Philippines – A total logging ban would only worsen the rate of deforestation of the country's meager forest cover.
Dr. Rex Victor Cruz, dean of the UP College of Forestry and Natural Resources in Los Banos and part of the UN Working Group on Climate Change team that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, said illegal loggers and subsistence farmers will swarm the forests and indiscriminately cut trees the very minute concessionaires abandon the areas they once protected as a result of the logging ban.
