The Amerindian Peoples Association (APA), with support from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), has embarked on a project to promote the participation of indigenous communities in improving forest governance.
The FAO project will further assist the communities to have an input into a key European Union (EU) programme on forest governance
Established in 2008, the EU’s Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) programme is focused on providing support to timber producing countries to implement projects that target forest governance measures.
A key element of the FLEGT Action Plan is the Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA), a voluntary scheme to ensure that only legally harvested timber is imported into the EU from countries agreeing to take part in this scheme.
Once agreed, the VPAs will include commitments and action from both parties to halt trade in illegal timber, notably with a licence scheme to verify the legality of timber exported to the EU. The agreements also promote better enforcement of forest law and promote an inclusive approach involving civil society and the private sector.
With Guyana still in the negotiation stage of the VPA process, it is the APA’s contention that Indigenous communities across Guyana have an essential role to play in these negotiations.
Thus, the project was launched on Tuesday under the theme, “Supporting priority actions for Amerindian communities to participate in the Guyana VPA process,” with the aim of enabling Indigenous villages in Guyana to design, develop and test approaches to community-based independent monitoring of legality compliance in timber supply chains. In the past, indigenous communities have expressed concern that their positions were not being taken account of in relation to the VPA.
The project itself will be executed by the APA over a period of 15 months, with financial and technical support from the UN’s FAO at a cost of USD$70,090.
Forest Policy Officer of the APA, Michael McGarrell explained that the new project is just a continuation of the work that was done by the APA in 2014 and 2015 under another project. That project had also been supported by the EU.
“During the 2 years we would have had that project, there were some concerns and recommendations that came from communities and we saw it very necessary to continue doing this type of work,” he said.
As a result, the APA made the decision to apply to the FAO for additional funding and was successful.
Acknowledging the existing Legality Assurance Monitoring System, which was established by the Guyana Forestry Commission, McGarrell expressed hopes of the APA being able to develop a management framework and a Free, Prior, Informed Consent Protocol (FPIC) that complements and at the same time tests their system.
“We want to see if it’s working, this is what we want to do with this project design and test the FPIC protocol in Amerindian, communities in forest management in the context of the Guyana VPA process. Many times we talk about FPIC but is it really being implemented in communities? Are communities are able to negotiate on their own behalf,” he asked.
“We would like to have community involvement in community monitoring systems. Many times we have systems that are developed on the outside and it comes down to you and you have to follow that system; but what if we could develop our own systems; what if we could say we would like to monitor the process. It gives us a little bit more scope in what to look for, because we’re the ones who are on the ground, we are the ones who understand the complexity of our environment,” the Forest Policy Officer added.
Further, he noted that because the APA is cognizant that all indigenous communities have different village dynamics, the initial framework which will be developed will be taken back to the communities to be fine-tuned to suit community specific needs.
“We will be having community engagement where we will be going out into the field to take what was developed, to have them go through it; to have them test it and see what are some of the things are they can use from it; what are some of the things they can add,” McGarrell related.
Once this is completed, the APA will have to make submissions to the National Technical Working Group (NTWG).
“It is important that we recognized that there must be a consensus; there must be effective participation in the whole process if we are to ensure we capture people’s concerns and recommendations. This, will hopefully be a guide towards developing a national approach by indigenous communities,” the APA member added.
Meanwhile, FAO country representative, Ruben Robertson in his address, described the FLEGT as a “true example of how the public and private sectors or entities can make and reinforce decisions about mandate use and conservation of forest.”
“In essence, when we speak of good governance, we are ensuring that things are done the legal way for sustainable forestry management. We are trying to ensure that you keep a livelihood on a sustainable basis; we ensure that you have sustainable food security and at the same time we address the issues relating to climate change,” Robertson said.
He noted that just this year, the FAO’s FLEGT project was extended under a third phase until 2020 with committed contributions from the European Union (EU), UK (DFID), Sweden (SIDA) and FAO. This third phase, he said will see the organization stepping up support to large private sector organizations to tackle commodity driven deforestation in their supply chain.
“A core part of work in this third phase involves empowering small and medium forest enterprises which employs some 140 million people across the world to go legal and to participate in governance decision in forestry resources… Countries working towards VPA’s, like yours with the EU and other tropical timber producing countries that are actively involved in FLEGT are also targeted in phase three,” Robertson said.
The FAO also provides a second system of support for civil society, governments and private sector through direct technical assistance and training for national VPA strategy development. However, the allocation is set a maximum of USD$50,000 per group.
In the end, the FAO will conduct a comprehensive evaluation to see if the objective of the project was met.
On Tuesday FAO welcomed the launch of the world’s first ever FLEGT licensing scheme as Indonesia exported its first shipment of FLEGT-licensed timber to the EU.
The scheme by Indonesia and the EU marks a major step forward in global efforts to stamp out illegal logging and promote the legal timber trade.
Indonesia’s FLEGT-licensing scheme is based on the country’s Sistem Verifikasi Legalitas Kayu (SVLK), or timber legality assurance system, which ensures that timber has been harvested, transported, processed and traded according to Indonesian law.
Under the scheme, all wood-based product types listed in a Voluntary Partnership Agreement between Indonesia and the EU and directly exported to European markets must now be accompanied by a FLEGT licence issued by an Indonesian licensing authority. In turn, importers can place it on the market with no additional checks.
