In October, Indonesia’s first year of Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) licensing came under scrutiny from an EU/ Indonesian Joint Expert Meeting (JEM). Source: Timberbiz
The overall figures looked good. Since the launch of licensing last November, 35,897 licences were issued to timber and wood product shipments to the EU, valued at €1.1 billion.
Under its FLEGT VPA, Indonesia also applies the same legality assurance standards to exports to other markets, issuing these with V-legal documents.
In the same period it issued 190,836 of these to cargoes worth US$10 billion.
The JEM also discussed the continuing rollout in forestry and timber sectors of Indonesia’s SVLK, the timber legality assurance system which lies at the heart of its FLEGT licensing operation.
So far, 23m hectares of forest and 3498 forest-based enterprises have been SVLK-certified. The JEM concluded that implementation of FLEGT licensing went smoothly overall. But it also recognised shortcomings and discussed lessons learned in the last 12 months, which could be used to strengthen the system.
It was announced that an EU/Indonesian ‘mini action plan’ has been initiated to address licensing technical issues.
Since 2001, Indonesia has made great progress in its efforts to eliminate illegal logging, including by developing and improving a national timber legality assurance system called SVLK.
Between 2007 and 2011, Indonesia and the EU negotiated a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) to promote trade in legal timber products and improve forest governance.
The VPA process provided significant opportunities to improve the SVLK.
In 2014, the two parties ratified the agreement and began implementing the VPA commitments.
In 2016, the EU and Indonesia confirmed that Indonesia had met the final requirements of the VPA, and Indonesia began issuing FLEGT licences on 15 November 2016.
Now that FLEGT licensing is operational, and for product types listed in the VPA’s revised annex 1, Indonesia exports to the EU only verified legal timber products accompanied by FLEGT licences.
Indonesia’s FLEGT licensed products are deemed to comply with requirements of the EU Timber Regulation. This means EU-based operators do not need to do further due diligence before placing FLEGT-licensed products on the market.
Since 15 November 2016, products listed in the VPA’s revised annex 1 can no longer enter the EU unless they have a FLEGT licence.
