Complementary Potential

Mr. John Hontelez, Chief Advocacy Officer of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and Mr. Ben Gunneberg, Chief Executive of Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), say certification schemes and the FLEGT initiative share goals and can be mutually beneficial.

What is your organisation’s perspective on the relation between FLEGT (Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade) and certification?

John Hontelez: FSC sees FLEGT’s aims and activities as complementary to its own. FLEGT voluntary partnership agreements (VPAs) are unique in the way they promote forest policy reform and establishment of effective enforcement institutions, and these are both preconditions for sustainable forest management.

FSC can then help VPA acceptance and realisation. Four of the six countries with ratified agreements have included the possibility of recognising private forest certification as compliant with their FLEGT timber legality assurance system.

We’re now asking for the option to recognise certification schemes in all further

VPAs at forest management and chain of custody levels.

Ben Gunneberg: PEFC sees FLEGT as very constructive in drawing attention to challenges and opportunities in forest governance and ensuring underlying issues giving rise to illegal logging and trade, such as weak governance and corruption, are addressed at the highest levels.

Also, while forest certification delivers locally developed, internationally endorsed sustainability verification beyond the scope of FLEGT, it is a voluntary mechanism and applies only to certified forest areas and supply chains. FLEGT VPAs and licensing offer the added value of targeting forest legality issues of producer countries as a whole.

Does FLEGT’s focus on timber sector transparency and stakeholder engagement add something new?