Timber trade regulation, power asymmetry and inequalities
By: Thuận Sarzynski
Tags: Forest, World, Sustainability, Equality, Environment

Photo by Simon Caspersen on Unsplash

Illegal logging and the European voluntary partnership agreement.

According to the international police, wood originated from illegal logging represents 15–30% of the global traded timber. This timber, which is harvested illegally from outside authorized areas or in quantities exceeding the assigned quotas can be found in your local department store as a wardrobe or a garden table. In the countries where illegal logging occurs, it has various negative effects such as reduced quality of forest and ecosystem services, threatened livelihood of forest dependent communities, and fostering of poor governance.

In response to the damages caused by illegal logging, the European Union has created the Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) action plan. This action plan has two components.

First, the European Timber Regulation (EUTR) forbids European companies to import illegal timber into the European market. European companies have to exercise due diligence and ensure that timber with high risk of illegality are not entering the European market. Of course, this legality check has a cost for European companies and the uncertainty around the origin of tropical timber tends to encourage European companies to buy timber from the temperate region (i.e.: oak) instead of tropical timber, creating a competitive disadvantage for tropical timber producers.

Second, the EU organizes negotiations with the tropical countries that want to sell timber in Europe. These negotiations lead to a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA), which is a bilateral trade agreement allowing producer countries to export at low cost. In this case European timber companies do not need to exercise any due diligence for the timber in provenance of the countries which have signed a VPA with the EU. The exporting country has the responsibility to ensure that its timber is legal and therefore should create its own legality system to trace every timber logs. The EU is assisting in the implementation of the VPA and encourage the civil society and the private sector to collaborate to design a sound timber legality assurance system. This task is particularly challenging in tropical countries where administrative infrastructure, human capital and finance are lacking.

The implementation of the VPA in Vietnam

The EU signed a VPA with Vietnam on the 19th of October 2018. The European timber market is important for the around 3000 Vietnamese timber enterprises, most of whom are small and medium size. Many of these enterprises are family based and have a limited operation scope and investment scale. Even though local NGOs are training enterprise owners and help them to build a timber traceability system, illegal logging in Vietnam is still an issue. On the one hand, it is driven by poor forest dependent communities and migrants who log illegally for subsistence. On the other hand, large networks of organized loggers, traders and powerful traffickers illegally and industrially log for profit.

The new legality definition might favour the wealthiest part of the Vietnamese society that already have the knowledge, financial power and influence to make the best out of it. On the contrary, small enterprises and marginalized communities may not be able to invest in new technology and train their staff. The skills these people are lacking can be as basic as reading and writing. Even speaking the Kinh national language can be a challenge for the people belonging to the 52 Vietnamese ethnic minorities. Moreover, some Vietnamese timber producers do not have the property rights of the place where they live and grow trees. Land boundaries are unclear and the boundaries on property titles often do not match the ones on the ground. Because of the power asymmetry mentioned above, a land tenure clarification might disadvantage the marginalized in favour of the wealthiest.

The VPA between the EU and Vietnam was ratified in 2019. Now, Vietnam is still working on its timber legality system. It’s still too early to know if it is effective at decreasing illegal logging in Vietnam and illegal timber imports from other countries.

Let’s hope that solutions can be found to reduce illegal logging without compromising the livelihood of the most vulnerable people of the Vietnamese timber industry.