“We hope that the regulation can be implemented in early 2009,” said Hadi Pasaribu, the Director General of BPK of Forestry Department in Jakarta, yesterday.
According to Pasaribu, it is very important to have such institution to put sustainable forest management practices to the test and to examine the compliance of the practices with the international certification standard.

He added that the institution was not established due to the pressure received from other countries, as stated in the agreements with EU or other countries.

The Wood Legality Verification Standard sets the legality status of wood products. The regulation will be endorsed through a mutual communiqué among the Ministry of Forestry, trade and industry.

Hadi Daryanto, the BPK Secretary General of Forestry Department, stated that WLVS acts as an interim extension of the soon to be dismissed Wood Industry Revitalization Body (BRIK).

“We are still waiting for inputs from various sectors such as the government, association, NGO or university to determine the actual form of the institution”, he added. In addition to act independently, the WLVS executing institution will also perform endorsement, monitoring activity and provide license.

High Cost
However, the Indonesian Wood Business Panel (APKINDO) voice their advice for the WLVS not to make the red tape even more complicated.

“We are concerned that WLVS could make the red tape even more complicated. This situation may lead to a high cost economy system”, said Rubianto, APKINDO spokesman, during the final public consultation on Wood Legality Verification System, held by Indonesian Ecolabeling Institute (LEI) on Wednesday.

APKINDO suggest that there should not be different interpretations of WLVS, especially by local authorities,. “This will make the system more complicated”, said Rubianto

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.