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 December 2008 |
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The VERIFOR team wishes a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all VERIFOR Newsletter readers! |
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VERIFOR is a research project on the verification
of legality in the forest sector. It aims to work
with partner institutions in tropical countries to
ensure that timber and forest products are legally
harvested and help producer nations put in
place verification systems with high national and
international credibility.
NEWS
It considered various initiatives now in process to ensure that the forest industry conforms to higher standards of legality and provided a forum in which forestry professionals shared ideas on international best practice. The workshop focused its discussion around the following themes:
All presentations and working groups' discussion summaries are available here Verification project publication: ‘Legal Timber: Verification and Governance in the Forest Sector'
The VERIFOR project has recently completed a book-length comparative study of verification systems entitled: Legal Timber: Verification and Governance in the Forest Sector. Legal Timber investigates how to verify the legality of traded timber in ways that will satisfy both the commercial interests of producer states and the social and environmental concerns of civil society and consumers. This seemingly straightforward and technical matter proves, on investigation, to be complex and political. Legal Timber draws on case studies from five continents, and investigates the ways in which questions of forest management illuminate much wider processes of governance reform. Insights are also sought from extra-sectoral cases, and important cross-cutting issues, on ownership, legality standards, independence, technologies, links with forest certification and developmental impacts – are identified and analysed. The aim is to provide a reference volume that is analytical, sceptical and enquiring, while also providing useful guidance to those who are seeking to put in place forest governance reforms. Legal Timber will be of interest to all those working on forest governance and the management of extractive resources, trade certification and labelling, environmental activism, and participatory development. It will shortly be available from the ODI bookshop Proposed Principles of action in verification - see the Verifor project poster Ten Proposed Principles of Action in Support of Good Governance are described in Legal Timber to assist with the design of effective and equitable forest verification systems. These principles featured on the Verifor project poster which was prepared for the 4 th FLEGT related projects meeting in Brussels on 9-10 th September 2008. New resources on the French / Spanish page - for a full list visit http://www.verifor.org/otherlanguages.html. The following case studies have now been published: REGIONAL activities In 2008 VERIFOR conducted three case studies on the control/verification systems in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo and Gabon. The case studies have been published in French and can be downloaded from the French/Spanish page.The English version will be available in January from the VERIFOR outputs page. From 9 to 11 July 2008, VERIFOR jointly organised a training workshop for forestry officials in Cameroon (with the Ministry of Forests - MINFOF, the World Resources Institute - WRI, the German Cooperation - GTZ, and the Independent Observer for forest operations - REM). The objective of the workshop was to sensitise, update, and train staff of the Cameroonian Ministry of Forests and the Ministry of Finance on the use of techniques and tools for the verification and control of forestry activities, as well as to share on-going experiences related to the implementation of forest management plans and their control. Full details and relevant downloads on the VERIFOR Africa page... Full details and relevant downloads on the VERIFOR Asia page... Since May 2008, VERIFOR has supported the efforts of TRAFFIC South America (TSAM) to promote policy dialogue processes in the Amazon regions of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. This has included ensuring that local perspectives inform the development of the government-led ALFA (Aplicación de la Legislación Forestal en la Amazonía) processes at the national level. The implementation of field activities has been context-driven, adapting to the circumstances of each country. In Ecuador, efforts have focused in designing an Amazon-specific proposal to promote legality and transparency in the region’s forest sector. Four local workshops have been carried out to give feedback to and ensure relevant inputs from key actors at the local level. As a result of this process, three multi-stakeholder forestry roundtables have been strengthened or established in three Amazon provinces of the country, with the aim to identify common approaches and commit to joint action to tackle illegal logging and deforestation. In Peru, the work has strived to go beyond the forest sector and address the extra-sectoral pressures on forests. The effort has focused in mobilising civil society, forest-dependent stakeholders and regional governments to influence the far-reaching legal reform process prompted by the upcoming entry into force of the US-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement. The work in Bolivia has led to the preparation of a forest governance review of the country’s Amazon region. Due to the current context of political turbulence in Bolivia, a main purpose of such analysis has been to describe the degree of social and political readiness for the development of forest-related participatory processes. A workshop is scheduled for January 2009, aimed at discussing the rapidly changing forest governance challenges in the Bolivian Amazon and developing partnerships among actors and across sectors for confronting such challenges Training and research at CATIE In June, the Verifor-supported MSc Course in Natural Resource Policy and Governance was completed at CATIE, with the participation of 32 MSc Students. This course drew on the Verifor conceptual framework for analysing verification systems inside the forest sector. The course was evaluated as excellent by the students. There is strong demand for a third course at CATIE in 2009, with the participation of new partners, including the FAO. Also in June, a training course was held at CATIE on the governance of natural resource management. This training was implemented by GTZ and VERIFOR team members, with the participation of practitioners and MSc Students from CATIE. In November, a study on the regional timber trade in Central America was completed, with country case studies on forest governance for Full details and relevant downloads on the VERIFOR Latin America page... FSC/WWF Workshop on Meeting the Challenges of FSC Certification for Smallholders and Community-based Forestry Operations : VERIFOR’s Asia Focal Point participated in this workshop held in Lisbon, Portugal from 7 – 10 th May , bringing knowledge and lessons learned from the VERIFOR Project. |
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The content of this newsletter is the sole responsibility of VERIFOR and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the EU or other donors. |