European Union Forest Law Research Articles

Exploring the Brussels Effect

The European Union (EU) wields significant influence over global markets through a phenomenon known as the Brussels Effect. This strategy involves aligning EU standards with regulations, effectively positioning the EU as a key driver of environmental and climate trade standards. Within the realm of trade in forest products, the EU has implemented instruments such as the Timber Regulation (EUTR), which was succeeded by Deforestation Free (EUDR) in 2023, and the EU Forest Law, Governance, and Trade Action Plan (FLEGT). These regulations have exerted considerable pressure on Brazil to embrace best practices for timber extraction, primarily by adhering to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and other private initiatives. The implications of EU influence in this context give rise to both positive and negative consequences, underscoring its significance in shaping global forest policies.

Strengthening the Role of Forests in Climate Change Mitigation through the European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Action Plan

Forests influence climate change by either increasing or decreasing the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. When unsustainably managed, forests can release more greenhouse gases than they can absorb, intensifying their atmospheric concentration with adverse climate and human health outcomes. Several frameworks and institutional arrangements have been adopted globally to help strengthen political commitment and actions to promote the sustainable management of forests and enhance forests’ contribution to climate change mitigation. Nevertheless, the destruction of tropical forests is accelerating at an alarming rate, making it an uphill battle to stop forest sector carbon emissions, limit the global average temperature rise to well below 2°C, and build a sustainable and climate-resilient future for all. The continuous release of forest-related emissions indicates that humanity has fallen short of meeting global forest and climate-related goals and, hence, reiterates the need to develop and apply additional tools to support international cooperation on mitigating forest carbon emissions. Considering deforestation’s challenge for voluntary frameworks such as the UN Forest Instrument and REDD+, opportunities/actions beyond non-legally binding agreements and principles must be harnessed promptly. Trade-related measures, such as the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Action Plan, are relevant in addressing deforestation. Arguably, the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Action Plan provides the most appropriate framework for future regional/global forest law reform.

FLEGT Voluntary Partnership Agreement implementation in Ghana: insights from a SWOT analysis

The European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA) is an important international forest governance initiative, yet various implementation challenges remain. The FLEGT VPA implementation challenges are well-documented in the scientific literature, where various methodologies and research approaches have been used. As the empirical case indicated various contradicting and overlapping claims, where different respondents framed the same situations as strengths as well as weaknesses, and/or as threats as well as opportunities, we used the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) approach to assess the associated governance changes in FLEGT VPA implementation in Ghana. This paper offers new insights derived from participant observation of the second independent technical evaluation of the Ghana Timber Legality Assurance System (GhTLAS) conducted in July 2019, and from semi-structured interviews with key informants and a document review. What are considered the greatest perceived strengths – namely multi-stakeholder engagement, clarification of regulatory frameworks, and access to information – are brought into question once the identified weaknesses and threats are explored in more detail. The identified weaknesses include the top-down nature of the multi-stakeholder process, fatigue related to additional legality principles, and bureaucracy of the GhTLAS, which negatively affect VPA implementation activities and processes in Ghana.

Navigating Through the Maze: Practical Constraints in the Implementation of Forest Regulations (FLEGT) in Ghana

The European Union Forest Law Enforcement on Governance and Trade (EU-FLEGT) Action Plan seeks to promote widespread sustainable forest management and relies largely on transnational actors and international law in its operationalization. The EU FLEGT sets out EU custom regulation through Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) which is a bilateral agreement between the EU and wood exporting countries with instruments aimed at promoting sustainable practices within the forest resources value chain. Ghana became a signatory to the FLEGT VPA since 2007, as part of the process, it is required to use technology to track timber logging from source to point of export. Issues of networks and inter-agency collaboration and dealing with human elements remain crucial in ensuring effective operationalization. Adopting a qualitative case study design as well as theories and concepts from the public policy implementation literature, this study examines the implementation vagaries of the FLEGT VPA in Ghana. Although the VPA is a laudable idea of using Information Technology (IT) in effectively tracking timber to its original source to ascertain legality or otherwise of the timber, the needed IT infrastructure and resources have not matched up with the goal. Additionally, the VPA implementation is expensive and has come with additional cost to the implementers, The study further observes that the increasing ‘red flags’ that are raised on the Ghana Wood Tracking System is a blend of technical errors emanating from negligence or capacity challenges and human manipulation. This calls for regular consultations and workshops with relevant stakeholders in order to assess which skills are deficient and a need to beef up through on-the-job training. The domestic market and trading activities tend to fuel demand for illegal timber hence a constraint to the full realization of the VPA objective. The study makes policy suggestions on how to address these implementation challenges.

Voluntary Partnership Agreements: Assessing impacts for better policy decisions

The European Union's Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan is an ambitious strategy to fight illegal logging and its negative impacts. The FLEGT theory of change is based on three types of FLEGT actions, namely timber production, demand, and global timber trade standards and dynamics. FLEGT works in more than a dozen countries through Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA). Very few studies exist on the global or country-level impact of the FLEGT-VPA process. We sought to understand the contribution of FLEGT-VPAs in three countries (Cameroon, Ghana, and Indonesia) at different stages of VPA implementation. A uniform methodology was applied to provide cross-cutting results on perceived changes directly linked to the FLEGT expected impacts while allowing for contextual specificities. This approach is designed to be easily replicable in all VPA countries and directly linked to the FLEGT global theory of change. This commentary presents our findings and their implications for policy makers.

Good governance practices in Ghana’s FLEGT voluntary partnership agreement process: an application of Q methodology

ABSTRACT The aim of the European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance, and Trade Action Plan and its Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) is to tackle illegal logging and trade in illegal timber, improve forest governance, and foster economic growth in the forest sector. This study employs a Q methodology to assess areas of consensus and disagreement among forest sector stakeholders in Ghana on good forest governance practices as applied to the VPA process. The consensus among these stakeholders is that the VPA process has improved the participation of civil society in decision making and the establishment of a robust verification system to promote transparency and accountability, which are critical for sustainable forest management. However, while the shared perspectives among stakeholders highlight the crucial role of the VPAs in promoting improved forest governance in Ghana, there are still areas of disagreement or tension regarding the issue of accountability, tree tenure rights, and the participation of local communities in the VPA process. The paper concludes by considering the practical implications of the findings for effective forest governance practices in developing countries.

Imposing legality: hegemony and resistance under the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance, and Trade (FLEGT) initiative

Timber legality trade restrictions and verification are a bundle of contemporary mechanisms triggered by global concerns about forest degradation and deforestation. The European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade initiative is a significant effort to not only screen out illegal timber and wood products from the EU, but also support trading partner countries to improve their legality definitions and verification processes. But by using bilateral agreements (Voluntary Partnership Agreements) as a key mechanism, the EU legitimizes trade partner nation-states as the authority to decide what is legal. We engage in a theoretical debate about the complexities of the meaning of legality, and then analyze empirical data collected from interviews in Ghana, Indonesia, Vietnam and Europe with policy, civil society and industry actors to understand how different actors understand legality. We find hegemonic notions of Westphalian statehood at the core of 'global' notions of legality and often contrast with local understandings of legality. Non-state actors understand these hegemonic notions of legality as imposed upon them and part of a colonial legacy. Further, notions of legality that fail to conform with hegemonic understandings are readily framed by nation-states as immoral or criminal. We emphasize the importance of understanding these framings to elucidate the embedded assumptions about what comprises legality within assemblages of global actors.Key words: FLEGT, timber legality, hegemony, power, globalization

INDONESIAN TIMBER LEGALITY ASSURANCE SYSTEM (SVLK): IN PURSUIT OF SUSTAINABILITY IN FOREST GOVERNANCE

This paper investigates the Indonesian Timber Legality Assurance (Sistem Verifikasi Legalitas Kayu, SVLK) and its nature to produce legal wood under the European Union-Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (EU-FLEGT) system. It is intended to ensure the exporting states control over legality of wood under new forest governance and its enforcement in EU market. Using a critical legal analysis, this paper argued that the SVLK could present legality in a formalistic way, but it could not guarantee the substantial meaning of benefit for sustainability, participatory and community. Therefore this paper contributes to provide a better understanding of the application of SVLK in Indonesia, along with reflecting some recommendations, as developing SVLK for domestic market, and replicating it into other exporting natural resources products. The comprehensive approaches for enforcing SVLK can lead to accelerate sustainability in more practical and grounded sense, to improve forest governance and welfare for local people therein.

Compliance of smallholder timber value chains in East Java with Indonesia's timber legality verification system

The Indonesian Timber Legality Verification System (SVLK) has been developed primarily to address illegal logging in Indonesia, and is licensed under the European Union's Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan. While SVLK was catalysed by concerns about the legality of wood originating from natural forests, it applies to all wood production in Indonesia, including smallholders harvesting planted trees. This study investigates SVLK implementation in value chains originating from smallholder forests planted on private land in East Java Province, where these forests are important assets for both farmers and the forest industries. It follows value chains for two manufactured wood products, blockboard and plywood. There are specific SVLK requirements for each value chain actor, other than the market brokers in these chains. Results reveal the limitations of SVLK architecture in relation to smallholder value chains, variation in compliance practices, and points of ‘illegalisation’ and legalization within the value chains. The blockboard and plywood products from each case study chain claimed SVLK compliance. However, only one of the two case study chains for each product was compliant up to the blockboard or plywood manufacturing stage; and no distinction was made at this stage between SVLK-compliant and non-compliant wood. Consequently, none of the final products from any case study chain are SVLK-compliant. These results illustrate the challenges of designing and implementing timber legality systems for smallholder value chains, and suggest areas of focus to improve SVLK for smallholder value chains.

Renting legality: How FLEGT is reinforcing power relations in Indonesian furniture production networks

Over the past few decades, transnational and supranational market-based forest governance systems have been developed to address the complex problems associated with deforestation, by improving the legality and sustainability of timber traded in global markets. This is catalysed by the increasing global production and consumption of timber products and increasing sensitivity of interest groups to how timber products are produced. A broad range of actors is involved in global production networks. This paper discusses how hierarchies and networks of power across the timber production network are encountered and negotiated. More specifically, it investigates the power constellations of wood furniture actors in Indonesia, nested within global production networks: who holds the power, how power is gained and maintained, and who wins and loses over time. Using the case of the timber legality assurance system in the context of the European Union Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative, we demonstrate that legality verification in Indonesia is both entrenching pre-existing inequitable power relations while producing new modes of elite capture. Legality verification requires new knowledge and additional costs that are sometimes beyond the capacity of certain (particularly smaller) furniture manufacturers operators. This has driven a new practice of renting out FLEGT licenses by larger producers/manufacturers to smaller ones in the country. Although the practice implies potential risks (e.g. fines), large companies in Indonesia manage risk by drawing from pre-existing patronage relations. They also appear to find the risk worthwhile, as it produces financial gain but moreover, a new form of control over the market. Meanwhile, small operators and artisanal producers that still aspire to global markets face disproportionate challenges to engage in legality and are becoming more vulnerable as a result of new legality measures.

‘Experimental’ or business as usual? Implementing the European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreement in Ghana

In this paper, we challenge recent positive assessments made of the European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs), through a case study of their implementation in Ghana. We do this through a review of the rich literature on forest governance in Ghana and the results of 160 semi-structured interviews with relevant actors in the country. While we agree that the VPA has helped establish new fora for dialogue in the forest sector in Ghana, we argue that it has not fundamentally changed the existing forest governance regime. Specifically, the VPA implementation has not changed tree tenure and benefit sharing practices, and by extension, the forestry concession system that for over 8 decades has failed to secure forest sustainability and social equity. The changes introduced through the VPA implementation – the Timber Legality Assurance System, updated forest management plans, and an artisanal milling strategy, largely represent technical fixes to deeply political processes that have long upheld unsustainable practices. Other changes such as enhanced enforcement of Social Responsibility Agreements and more transparent allocations of timber rights are improvements, but they do not fundamentally change the tenure and benefit sharing arrangement, which by any standard is inequitable. Our evidence particularly contradicts Overdevest and Zeitlin's (2016, 2018) depiction of the country's VPA experience as an emerging ‘experimentalist’ forest governance entailing substantive dialogue, recursive problem-solving, and policy learning. At the contrary, and paradoxically, we argue that the VPA implementation in Ghana serves to stabilize and reproduce the very forest governance regime that it set out to reform– a process that is much less ‘experimental’, and much more business as usual.

Experimentalism in transnational forest governance: Implementing European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreements in Indonesia and Ghana

AbstractOver the past decade, the European Union (EU) has created a novel experimentalist architecture for transnational forest governance: the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative. This innovative architecture comprises extensive participation by civil society stakeholders in establishing and revising open‐ended framework goals (Voluntary Partnership Agreements [VPAs] with developing countries aimed at promoting sustainable forest governance and preventing illegal logging) and metrics for assessing progress toward them (legality standards and indicators) through monitoring and review of local implementation, underpinned by a penalty default mechanism to sanction non‐cooperation (the EU Timber Regulation that prohibits operators from placing illegally harvested wood on the European market). This paper analyzes the implementation of VPAs in Indonesia and Ghana, the two countries furthest advanced toward issuing FLEGT export licences. A central finding is the reciprocal relationship between the experimentalist architecture of the FLEGT initiative and transnational civil society activism, whereby the VPAs’ insistence on stakeholder participation, independent monitoring, and joint implementation review, underwritten by the EU, empowers domestic non‐governmental organizations with local knowledge to expose problems on the ground, hold public authorities accountable for addressing them, and contribute to developing provisional solutions.

Participation, public policy-making, and legitimacy in the EU Voluntary Partnership Agreement process: The Cameroon case

This paper discusses how participatory policy-making processes such as the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) negotiations are and should be organised to foster political legitimacy and support. The VPAs are bilateral agreements between the European Union (EU) and timber producing countries. VPAs constitute a cornerstone in EU's Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) programme, the most important tool for the EU to address illegal logging problems. The EU requires that national VPA negotiations include participation by the relevant stakeholders. Based on primary data, we compare the VPA negotiations in Cameroon (2006–2009) with three different ‘ideal’ models of participatory policy-making: the rationalist, the communicative incremental and the mixed model, which we expect have different implications for legitimacy. We conclude that the Cameroonian process is closest to a rationalist model with elements of the mixed model, and that this has increased legitimacy and support only to a limited extent. For future processes in other countries, we recommend stronger elements of the mixed model, and more careful considerations about stakeholder identification processes; how to adapt policy-process to specific contexts; and how to strengthen communication and information flows. Considerations about these elements could also strengthen the applicability of the ideal models.

Die EU Timber Regulation und ihre Konsequenzen für die Schweiz

The EU Timber Regulation and its implications for Switzerland In 2012, almost 96% of all Swiss wood exports were delivered into the European Union (EU). Since March 3rd, 2013, these exports are subject to the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR). Besides the Voluntary Partnership Agreements, this regulation constitutes the second policy package under the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Action Plan (EU-FLEGT). The first part of this paper discusses the aims of the new timber regulation as a measure to combat illegal logging and illegal timber trade. The second part builds on expert interviews that were conducted with representatives of the industry, ministries, inter-trade organizations, as well as a politician and summarizes first experiences since the implementation of the policy as well as expected implications for the Swiss timber export sector. Moreover, four possible courses of action for Switzerland that were raised in the expert interviews are discussed: 1) integrating the EU Timber Regulation into the regulation on the declaration of wood and wood products, 2) creating a Swiss Timber Regulation in the course of the revision of the environmental protection law, 3) proactively providing information while avoiding a change of laws, and 4) a government guarantee for Swiss wood.

Cameroon's Hidden Harvest: Commercial Chainsaw Logging, Corruption, and Livelihoods

This article discusses the extent, impacts, and governance dynamics of illegal logging and associated corruption in the chainsaw milling sector in Cameroon and the implications for natural resource management theory and international initiatives, represented by the European Union's Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan. We show that state officials may be collecting some €6 million in informal payments each year, part of which is siphoned into a pyramidal system that manages careers not by merit, but by the price one can pay. We argue that corruption becomes a root cause of policy failures when disillusioned state officials perceive that those at the top of the pyramid do not have the legitimacy needed to promote reforms. Arbitrariness, mistrust, and contradiction then predominate, thus weakening the rule of law. We derive lessons for interventions addressing corruption and its impacts.

Interaction between the FLEGT-VPA and REDD+ in Ghana: Recommendations for interaction management

Deforestation and forest degradation remain high worldwide, and one of the dominant underlying causes for this forest loss is illegal logging. Numerous international policies have been developed aimed at addressing these issues. This article studies two of these regimes, the European Union's Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) action plan and its Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with Ghana, and the climate mitigation policy of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). The interactions between these two international policies at the national level, namely in Ghana, are analyzed. The research shows numerous current and anticipated interactions between the two regimes. Most of these interactions potentially have a positive influence, but much depends on the future implementation of both regimes. The article makes recommendations on how to manage the interactions in order to improve the synergies and enhance effectiveness, including institutionalizing information sharing and learning, jurisdictional delimitation, and improving collaboration.