In order to address illegal logging through action in both the European Union and in timber-exporting countries, the EU started the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative, to determine the legality of timber entering its market.
Guyana is now a step closer towards concluding a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the EU, after completing a significant milestone in the negotiation process towards receiving a FLEGT Licence to export timber to EU markets.
Some of the stakeholders who conducted the field-testing phase
Known as field-testing, this phase enables stakeholders to evaluate progress and make recommendations for the successful completion of the VPA negotiations. The field test enabled stakeholders to assess the practicality and credibility of the VPA’s legality definition and legality verification procedures, as well as the readiness of government agencies to implement Guyana’s timber legality assurance system.
For two weeks in June, representatives from Government, the private sector, indigenous peoples’ groups and civil society organizations travelled to regions across the country and gathered views of some 150 stakeholders who assessed the main sections of the VPA. Guyana has made substantial progress on its VPA since negotiations began in December 2012. The VPA aims to address the illegal trade in timber. Once ratified, the VPA will commit both parties to trade only legal timber and timber products, and will cover Guyana’s domestic market as well as its exports to the EU. Now that the field-testing phase is completed, the VPAs will be preparing a report on their findings and making recommendations to the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) — and by extension the Government — to strengthen the legality definition. The FLEGT system mandates countries to use the Wood Tracking System to tag logs and their stumps, so that when logs reach the point of export they could be traced backed to the origin to ensure legality. The system is not new to Guyana, since loggers have been mandated to tag their produce so they can track them to ensure they are within their licensed agreement.
“The whole purpose is that the EU wants to ensure that all the timber coming from Guyana is legal, and if you have a FLEGT licence, it will open up the market so they will know that the product they are receiving would have gone through the process,” a source close to the negotiations told this publication.
The EU FLEGT Regulation of 2005 empowers the European Commission to negotiate Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) with timber-exporting countries. Under these agreements, VPA partner countries ensure they only export to the EU legal products carrying FLEGT licences.
A Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) is a legally binding trade agreement between the European Union and a timber-producing country outside the EU. The purpose of a VPA is to ensure that timber and timber products exported to the EU come from legal sources. The agreements also help timber-exporting countries stop illegal logging by improving regulation and governance of the forest sector.
