BONN, Germany (31 May 2010) — The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Lembaga Ekolabel Indonesia (LEI) have announced the launch of an 18-month collaboration to explore potential areas of cooperation regarding responsible forest management and forest certification in Indonesia. The agreement marks an important measure in the global efforts to facilitate responsible forest management in the tropics, and builds upon previous collaborative initiatives to advance forest certification in Indonesia.

As biodiversity hotspots of the world, tropical forests are vital to the existence of millions of indigenous people, and possess a unique set of social and environmental attributes. The rainforests of Indonesia rank among the most extensive and biologically significant in the world. However, these forests are under tremendous pressure. Deforestation from illegal logging and forest conversion continues to threaten vital habitat and critically endangered species such as the Sumatran orang-utan.

Forest management certification can offer financially competitive alternatives to poor forest management practices, illegal logging and land conversion. FSC and LEI use certification to address crucial social and environmental forestry issues — FSC internationally and LEI specific to Indonesia. The cooperation between the two certification schemes has the potential to benefit from the locally relevant standards and processes led by LEI in Indonesia with the internationally recognized FSC standards.

LEI has a balanced multi-stakeholder governance structure similar to that of FSC and LEI has been instrumental in establishing an applicable system for improving forest management in Indonesia, said FSC Director General Andre de Freitas. With the shared goal to improve forest management in the tropics, we can further this work by identifying the synergies between the FSC and LEI certification schemes and building on our respective strengths.

This is a new phase of FSC and LEI collaboration in Indonesia which shows significant advancement since the Joint Certification Program that concluded in 2005. Through many constructive discussions and meetings, FSC and LEI have agreed to sign a Memorandum of Understanding which intends to set up a new collaboration expressing shared vision of both parties which demonstrate mutual respect on each other certification scheme and achievements, said LEI Executive Director F. Agung Prasetyo.   The FSC and LEI are both certification schemes that promote responsible forest management. There would be so much we could achieve by working together and thus hopefully bring significant benefit to those who use the FSC and LEI certification schemes.

FSC and LEI have identified six specific areas for collaboration which will be explored in the coming months. These will include several analysis of compatibility between forest management standards and other central components of the respective schemes, and a particular focus on information exchange on certification of community based forest operations.

About FSC: FSC is an independent, non-governmental, not for profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the worlds forests. It provides standard setting, trademark assurance and accreditation services to companies and organizations interested in responsible forestry. Products carrying the FSC label are independently certified to assure consumers that they come from forests that are managed to meet the social, economic and ecological needs of present and future generations. FSC rules and procedures are developed through strong multi-stakeholder processes. They are supported and endorsed by social, environmental and economic constituents in the Global South and Global North alike. Find more information at www.fsc.org.

About LEI: The Indonesian Ecolabelling Institute (LEI-Lembaga Ekolabel Indonesia) is a non-profit balanced membership based organization that develops forest certification systems that promote mission of just and sustainable forest resource management in Indonesia. LEI has a very broad support in Indonesia among the forest industry, indigenous peoples groups, the forest science community as well as social and environmental non-governmental organizations. As a balanced membership based organization LEI retains independence and transparency, both necessary for the credibility of forest certification. Find more information at www.lei.or.id.

Media Contacts:

The complete release available to download here
Mou beetwen LEI and FSC available to download here

On 20th October, 2009, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), a major paper company in Indonesia, held a LEI certified paper seminar in Tokyo. The LEI certification is a certification developed by LEI (Indonesia Ecolabeling Institute) to give an endorsement to sustainable forestry management. This is an Indonesian version of the forest certification system of FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) which is headquartered in Germany. Papers made of certified wood materials derived from such forests are dubbed as certified paper.

Environmental NGOs have been criticizing that wood materials used by APP were harvested from high conservation value forests. In response to such criticisms, several international or Japanese companies terminated to purchase papers from APP. In order to overcome such suspicions, APP has decided to launch LEI certified paper.

In the past, environmentally friendly papers were mostly recycled papers, however, FSC certified papers are beginning to get recognition due to the recycled paper content falsification issue has come to the fore.

Recently, certification systems for agriculture, forestry and fishery have started up one after another. One of the reasons why certified products have become widespread is that companies are now required to conserve biodiversity.

As demand for certified products increases, various certification systems have started to evolve in the same business sector such as LEI certification acquired by APP and SGEC (Sustainable Green Ecosystem Council) in Japan. While FSC and MSC were developed with the backing of environmental NGOs, most latecomer certification systems such as SGEC and MEL (Marine Eco-label) were developed by the initiative of manufacturers. In the background, there is manufacturers’ motivation to set standards which are suited to the reality of each country and to acquire the certification at a lower cost.

On the other hand, positions of preceding certification brands such as FSC are being more firmly established and it is uncertain whether the latecomer certifications can be recognized by the market. The key will be the level of latecomer certification systems and how they are evaluated by consumers and purchasing managers in charge of green products at corporations.

The idea of legality standard is initiated by accreditation and certification at international level to speed up the slow pace of sustainable forest certification process and the slow development of companies producing tropical forest products which only reaches the rate of 6%. Although believed as necessity, certification is a practical and realistic way to verify the legality origin of woods. Certification is also a trustworthy and can be accepted by the market. The Forest Stewardship Council describe the above condition by creating the term of “Certification is not Enough”.

International community began to take illegal logging activity into account since late 90s. It is an important component in G8 Action Plan of Forest, and become the main issue in the FLGT Conference coordinated by World Bank in Bali September 2001 and in Africa (Yaounde, October 2003)

One of the decisions stated that a firm action needs to be conducted, including performing collaborative works between intra and inter country authorities to prevent illegal woods distribution and at the same time to explore ways to eliminate activities indicated as illegal woods harvesting. Based on the FLGT Action Plan, a system is required to assess wood legality the producer countries must comply with as required by the exporter countries (EU). The assessment standard must take other international regulations into account such as CITES. CITES must be referred for license granting.

Based on the FLEGT result in Bali, the British government intends to have a bilateral agreement with Indonesia. On April 2002 a Memurandum of Understanding between the two governments was signed. The MoU consists of several key elements such as: performing key identifications on the legislative body and multi stakeholder consultation formed to provide support to battle illegal logging activities.

Quoting Daru Asycarya, the importer countries are at the moment divided into two mainstreams of thoughts: 1) rely the legality status of the woods on the regulation imposed in the country of origin. Unfortunately the legal status standard for one country is different to other countries. Thus, it is difficult to implement this approach at field level. For instance, even neighboring countries like Indonesia and Malaysia have different policy on wood legal status. 2) a more moderate view, several producer countries does not really care about the regulation (on wood legality) imposed in their own countries as long as the UE countries accept their products. This leads to a violation of commitment to support the use of woods originated from a sustainable resource.

The EU, as importer countries, is more interested in the first mainstream of tought. Through FLEGT, the EU has finalized the FLEGT Action Plan. The Action Plan focuses on the bilateral agreements between EU and the producer countries. The bilateral agreement requires all producer countries to issue legality permit for all wood products exported to EU. This is based on the declaration made in Bali and The Hague of which stating that sustainable product demand is a high priority in the politic agenda. European countries requiring the green procurement are: UK, Denmark, Holland, France, German, and Sweden. At the moment FLEGT recommends EU to encourage its country member governments to support ECAs’ (Export Credit Agencies) function in performing detailed examinations on the legality status of the forest resources management costumers.

Legal Definition
Daru added, prior to LOV system development, the most important question to answer is: ”How to define legality in the context of curning illegal timber ? ”. If the question is answered, there will be three steps to perform wood verification:
1. Legal,
2. Legal and implementing a program to achieve sustainibility
3. Legal and sustainable (SFM Certification).

“The principle of legal can be implemented based on: auditable legality criteria, describing national rules and regulations or internationally accepted principles and acknowledged by stakeholders,” said Antoine de La Rochefordiere

Taufiq Alimi, the Executive Director of Indonesian Ecolabeling Institute confirmed, “The legality definition must lead to sustainability, not just statement and legal evidence.”

The sustainability principle means to guarantee the sustainability of production functions such as ecological and economy functions. In this context, woods originated from wood processing industry which does not support sustainability principles can not be categorized as legal.

“It needs to be noted that, in reality, Legal Origin Verification (LOV) is not limited to the industrial sector. The Sustainable Forest Management context in LOV– in the management unit– needs to be implemented through Legal Harvesting Compliance. LHC must taken several criteria into account such as Chain of Custody. And also sustainable harvest regulation and land use legal status.

The article is downloaded from WoodBiz June 2008 Edition.

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