Regional Outlook: change of tack in Africa

FSC General Assembly 2011

Guest article contributed by Elie Hakizumwami, FSC-Africa Regional Director.

Although significant progress with FSC certification has been achieved in the Congo Basin, much remains to be done.

Stakeholder support is important and promoters of FSC certification in Africa are convinced that logging and timber trade carried out in compliance with the rules of sustainable management can play an important role to the local environment, communities and governments.

In April 2009, FSC relocated its Africa Regional Office to Cameroon in order to be better positioned to forge strong partnerships with key players and respond to challenges faced in its two priority regions on the continent: the Congo Basin; and South Africa.

Barriers are very real

There are substantial barriers to forest certification in the Congo Basin. These include the support for “status quo ante” by some members of the private sector because of their hidden agenda; competing schemes using lower standards; insufficient communication on the progress of FSC certification, especially in the market areas in Europe, China and North America; controversies over Certification Bodies and logging companies’ performance standard, with the belief by some international NGOs that logging in tropical forests can never be sustainable.

Breakthroughs

Participatory multi-partner approach was instrumental to promote FSC certification in Africa and this must continue and extended to new partners.

Several governments have also made legislative provisions for voluntary certification. This has established a clear link between national regulations and international criteria for sustainable forest management.

FSC certification helps address illegal logging and associated trade, but it is unlikely to be effective as a “carrot” without a complementary “stick” in the form of government control.

Synergies with other initiatives

Many stakeholders believe there’s a risk that the current attention given to addressing illegal logging through the European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance, and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) will divert the attention of timber producers in Africa from sustainability to a lower level of performance.

On the contrary, there is mutual synergy and overlaps between FLEGT and FSC that can be exploited to support the expansion of FSC.

To ensure that FSC timber is recognised by FLEGT-VPA, FSC is engaged with the EU and EFI to analyse the gaps between FSC standard and the VPA agreements. The next step would be to incorporate the VPA standards into the FSC standard at national levels.

Multi-actors bring multi-benefits

Given the complex social and institutional context in Africa, it was realised that FSC alone cannot have all expertise and resources needed to promote responsible forestry in this region. This open, multi-actor approach has been and remains instrumental for the success of FSC certification in this region.

For instance the governments are setting up favourable conditions for the promotion of responsible forestry. These include enacting policies and legislations that favour certified products and influence responsible performance by increasing support of certification as a solution.

In February 2005 in Brazzaville, they validated the “Convergence Plan for Conservation and sustainable management of Central Africa forest ecosystems” that includes forest certification among its key components.