Dear Editor,
I welcome the letter captioned “The Forestry Commission has had an effective log tracking system for seven years” (07.01.22). I feel that it is now possible to approach the crux of the matter concerning the forest sector in Guyana. This is the paradox between the generally good legal framework, national policy and strategy and the weak and selective application by Government and its agencies of this governance. Taking in sequence the points raised by author Paul Taylor –
1. Under the framework of the EU Action Plan for control of illegal logging and trade in illegally harvested forest products, the EU will progressively close its external border to imports of forest products which are not licensed as legally produced. The EU has begun negotiations with countries which export timber to the EU, on voluntary partnership agreements (VPAs). A key element in the VPAs is an agreed definition of legality and measures to assure legality of production; measures which exist not just on paper but which are applied consistently and equitably nation-wide. The recent update meeting (25 and 26 January) on illegal logging at the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA, London, a meeting which a Chevening Scholar from Guyana attended) showed that some countries which have begun informal negotiations with the EU on VPAs are actually much less advanced than Guyana in both paper procedures and their field application. Unfor- tunately, Guyana has failed to engage with the EU and has thus missed both the first and second tier opportunities to negotiate a VPA.
2. The timber tagging system developed in 1999 was intended from the beginning to use bar-coded tags and electronic bar-code readers. The tags have indeed been distributed by the GFC but by failing to have an operational electronic database and bar-code readers the timber tagging actually facilitates illegal logging, as I pointed out in my Guyana Citizens Initiative seminar on 9 November last year, reported by SN on 13 November (‘Country getting a pittance from Asian forestry companies -Bulkan’). It is good to hear from Paul Taylor that the GFC is acting on the recommendations by Proforest on a legality verification scheme, and I hope that he will use his influence to ensure that both the Proforest report and the GFC response will be published widely and soon. A VPA with the EU will need a fully operational timber tagging system of this type (or better), plus independent forest monitoring by an agency which is not controlled by either the public or the private sector and which publishes its reports without restriction.
3.The definition of illegal logging which I quoted from the RIIA in my SN letter published on January 17 (‘Illegal logging in Guyana is worse than admitted by the Guyana Forestry Commission’) is the one used by the EU, and its detail will need to be addressed by Guyana in any future VPA negotiations.
4. The definition includes “Illegalities may also occur during transport including illegal processing and export, misdeclaration to customs, and avoidance of taxes and other charges”. Paul Taylor says that “When . . . any breach occurs, it is . . immediately dealt with”. I note here that long-standing debts for forest taxes are still unpaid by (some) members of the Forest Products Association (over one million US dollars, according to a GFC publication of August 2005), and that Barama’s tax avoidance on export of logs not derived from its own concession is still outstanding, according to reports from the Commissioner of Forests to the GFC Board of Directors.
5. The report published by Accreditation Services International GmbH on January 15 testifies that Barama equipment is being used outside Barama’s concession TSA 04/1991; see http://www.accreditation-services.com/Documents/ASI-Forest%20Management%20Audit-Guyana-SGS-2006-Final.pdf. Barama has not denied that the equipment was imported under foreign direct investment concessions. Paul Taylor, who is apparently privy to the activities of the Guyana Revenue Authority, the GFC and the Forest Products Marketing Council (FPMC) should wake up these three agencies.
6. Sub-letting of forest harvesting concessions is illegal under the specific terms of those agreements. The deals by which Barama has extended its legal 26 per cent control of Guyana’s allocated State Production Forest to more than 33 per cent (and DTL to extend from 8 to over 10 per cent, UNAMCO from 2 to over 6 per cent, and JaLing from 2 to over 4 per cent) – are not of the simple logging contractor/sub-contractor (“sprinter”) arrangements. When these foreign companies have taken over concessions leased by the GFC they have taken effective managerial control in exchange for an illegal rent, and this is against both policy and the laws. The law (Forest Regulations) is absolutely clear that transfer of concessions is permissible only with Presidential approval and only if GFC conditions are followed. The GFC Board has never approved any such conditions (except for a single trial several years ago) and there is no public record of any Presidential approval.
These transactions therefore are both illegal and against policy. At this point, may I apologise for an error to which Paul Taylor has drawn attention: I should have referred to the National Forest Policy (1997, Part III – not Part I), section B 3 (d) which requires the GFC to abrogate non-compliant concessions. Section B 3 (a) in the same policy requires the GFC to re-negotiate forest concessions “through a fair and transparent framework” – which has not (yet) been published.
In summary, Mr Editor, Guyana is indeed ahead of many countries in having quite good paper laws and procedures. The question which Paul Taylor does not answer is why are these laws and procedures not being implemented thoroughly?
Yours faithfully,
Janette Bulkan
