- Ghana is the first country in Africa to be awarded a Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) license, which is seen as the “gold standard” in the sustainable timber trade.
- The fate of many of Africa’s surviving forests could depend on its success, highlighted by an official meeting in Brussels this week that will mark the first shipment of timber from Ghana to the EU under the program — but a new op-ed wonders if it will it be the last.
- “If Ghana’s FLEGT license turns out to be the last, it would snatch defeat from the jaws of a famous victory. But there is also hope that Ghana’s groundbreaking system of timber traceability could help spur similar systems in other countries,” the author argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Ghana has become the first African country to win fast-lane access to European Union markets for its timber.
A trading license negotiated with the European Commission over 16 years means all logging in the West African country is now recognized as being untainted by illegality, and is carried out with the consent of nearby forest communities, who are compensated in cash or in kind.
Armed with the license, traders can sell Ghanaian timber into Europe without further checks on its legality, a landmark that will be recognized by a gathering of Ghanaian and European politicians, timber industry officials and others on Nov. 4 in Brussels.
The Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) license — among a series of measures introduced by the EU more than 20 years ago to tackle the root causes of illegal logging — has widespread support from industry and civil society in Ghana, as do the national rules on forestry and timber tracking and trading that underpin it.
Richard Nsenkyire, managing director of Samartex Timber and Plywood, one of Ghana’s leading timber exporters, says the license marks “the beginning of a new era in compliant international trade” for Ghana, which “will guarantee access to the EU market.”
Yet there are fears that Ghana’s FLEGT license, the first in Africa and only the second in the world (after Indonesia), could also turn out to be the last — a victim, in part, of a political climate in which the EU appears to be retreating from many of its commitments to protect nature.
More than skin deep
Under the new regime, trees can only be felled in designated areas according to agreed volumes. Logging is banned in protected areas, those of global biodiversity importance, and on steep slopes or close to water bodies. “This is real progress in sustainable forest management,” says Albert Katako, head of programs at Civic Response, a Ghanaian resource-rights advocacy group heavily involved in drawing up the plans. “And it isn’t just about trees — it’s about people.”
Historically, the marginalized communities living in the vicinity of logging operations would see their forests razed, but none of the profits from it. Now, Katako says, “Timber companies [must] reinvest in local communities, so they see real benefits from logging,” and must negotiate social responsibility agreements (SRAs) with communities within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of their concessions, and pay them royalties. More than 100 such agreements have been negotiated to date.
“The harmony over how to manage the nation’s forests is more than skin deep,” says Saskia Ozinga, who has watched the laws develop as co-founder of Fern, a Brussels-based forest NGO on whose board I serve. The long process “has led to cultural change in which the Forestry Commission and critical NGOs worked together — in stark contrast to the beginning when they were at loggerheads, and cooperation seemed impossible.”
The 16 years it took to reach a deal “is partly due to the inclusiveness of all the relevant stakeholders to develop trust [and] build a robust system,” says Doreen Asumang-Yeboah, director of the Rights and Advocacy Initiatives Network, a Ghanaian resource-rights NGO.
Ghana’s FLEGT license has been issued under the terms of a timber trade pact with the EU known as the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA), signed in 2009, which requires exporters to demonstrate the sustainability and legality of each timber shipment. But the license is a circuit-breaker for the bureaucracy involved, in that all processes — such as tree geolocation data, to prove lack of deforestation — are now done electronically.
The license is underpinned by a tracking regime known as the Timber Legality Assurance System (TLAS), which Hugh Brown, CEO of the Ghana Forestry Commission, says provides “an accountability chain … from the tree stump site in the forest, through transportation, processing to export that ensures every action is traceable.” The “transformational change to forest administration [has] fundamentally reshaped how we manage, monitor and make decisions about our forest resources,” he says.
The electronic tracking system is backed with audits by inspectors and an independent monitor. A publicly available online portal developed by Civic Response in collaboration with the Forestry Commission allows any Ghanaian or international stakeholder to monitor timber flows across the country.
Shifting threats
Ghana has around 8 million hectares (almost 20 million acres) of forests, covering around a third of the country, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Some 2.6 million hectares (6.4 million acres) of these are dedicated to timber production, with half the total lumber output going for export.
In the past quarter-century, about 14% of the country’s forests have been lost, according to Global Forest Watch, an independent online platform. However, the largest cause of deforestation is no longer forestry, but rather clearance for agriculture — often to grow commodity crops such as cacao, of which Ghana is currently the second-largest exporter.
Europe’s contribution to these losses could be addressed by the upcoming EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which will require importers to show that major commodity crops, including cacao, imported to Europe are grown legally and without causing deforestation — but which the European Commission now wants to delay for a second time.
Even so, and whatever the pitfalls, outsiders hail the transformation of forest governance that underpins the country’s FLEGT license. “Ghana should be rewarded for putting in place such a robust and sustainable framework for forest management and timber production,” says David Hopkins, chief executive of Timber Development UK, which represents British timber suppliers. “Hopefully this will act as an incentive for other countries to improve and implement their own national forestry systems.”
But will Ghana become a model for others? The evidence is that forests are best protected when markets demand it, and here Europe appears to be taking a step backward. The EU has become reluctant to embroil itself in further protracted negotiations on how forests are managed on other continents.
Late last year, the European Commission announced unilateral plans to terminate two of its African VPAs, in Cameroon and Liberia. The Cameroon VPA was canceled this summer, and the commission now says it wants to replace VPAs with looser, nonbinding trade arrangements.
This has provoked anger in Africa. The former president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, warned in May that axing her country’s VPA would seriously undermine its efforts to end illegal logging. “Without recognition in markets that give importance to compliance with our regulations, we are worried that the illegal timber trade will once again take root,” she wrote in The Guardian.
If Ghana’s FLEGT license turns out to be the last, it would snatch defeat from the jaws of a famous victory.
But there is also hope that Ghana’s groundbreaking system of timber traceability could help spur similar systems in other countries, and perhaps be adopted for other commodities associated with deforestation, such as cacao and coffee.
The fate of many of Africa’s surviving forests could depend on the outcome.
Fred Pearce is a journalist, award-winning author of 14 books, and board member of the Brussels-based forests and rights NGO Fern. This is an abridged version of a longer piece that he wrote for Fern on Ghana’s FLEGT license.
Banner image: Log truck leaves a Ghanaian forest. Photo courtesy of Fern.
Related audio from Mongabay’s podcast: Coffee is the sixth-largest driver of deforestation, but it doesn’t have to be this way, listen here:
See related coverage:
Heading into COP, Brazil’s Amazon deforestation rate is falling. What about fires?