The EU and the ‘Problem’ of Illegal Logging: the Case of the EU-Malaysia VPA

Abstract

Malaysia was the first country in Asia to start negotiations for a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the European Union (EU). These VPAs are the core of the EU’s external forest governance and stem from the 2003 Forest Legality Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan. Both aim to govern the ‘problem’ of illegal logging. This article presents two investigations. First, it looks at the process of problematization: what is the problem represented to be? In other words, how is the problem delineated and what assumptions underlie this representation? To this end, this article presents a thorough analysis of the FLEGT Action Plan, puts together the pieces of the problem, and links them to the coherence of the EU as a global actor. Second, the article delves into resistance to this governing in the case of Malaysia. In the VPA processes, the EU expects local actors to articulate their interests and streamline their knowledge to reach an optimal definition of legal logging. These expectations however obscure a history of diverging interests and legal battles in Malaysia. The second part of this article investigates how local actors such as indigenous peoples’ groups, timber producers and state-level politicians have come to resist the VPA and its governing in a series of opting-out and walking out.