In anticipation of March 2013, when the European Union's (EU) Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan to fight illegal logging is set to take effect, the EU is working to finalize import agreements with countries throughout the world.
In anticipation of March 2013, when the European Union's (EU) Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan to fight illegal logging is set to take effect, the EU is working to finalize import agreements with countries throughout the world.
Recently, Honduras and the EU started negotiations for a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA), a bilateral agreement that ensures wood products exported to the EU will be verifiably legal under Honduras' laws.
"FLEGT is a participatory process on a large scale. We organized three workshops to see if civil society, including indigenous communities and the private sector, had any interest in this process," José Trinidad Suazo, minister director of Honduras' National Institute for Forest Conservation and Development, Protected Areas and Wildlife, said in a press release. "We see real interest, not so much in the quantity of wood we export to Europe but rather in terms of image. When people see commercial timber from our forests, they think they see deforestation, and we want to change this image in the public eye."
While Honduras was the first country in the Americas to begin discussions over a VPA, the EU announced that Guyana also recently entered formal discussions for a similar agreement.
The recent additions of Honduras and Guyana to the group of countries in the "negotiation phase" with the EU brings the total to six: Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Guyana, Honduras, Malaysia and Vietnam. The countries that have concluded VPA discussions and are in the "system development phase" for complying with FLEGT are: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ghana, Indonesia, Liberia and Republic of Congo.