By Precious D. Freeman
The Government of Liberia and the European Union Voluntary Partnership Agreement on Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) have concluded a three-day Joint Implementation Committee (JIC) meeting in Monrovia.
The meeting that was held on Tuesday under the theme; “Promoting Sustainable Forest Governance through Voluntary Partnership.”
FLEGT is the European Union’s program aim at reducing illegal logging by strengthening sustainable and legal forest management, improving governance, and promoting trade in legally produced timber.
FLEGT also works through Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs), which are legally binding trade agreements between the European Union (EU) and a timber-producing country outside the EU.
The purpose of a VPA is to ensure that timber and timber products exported to the EU comes from legal sources and the agreement also helps timber-exporting countries stop illegal logging by improving the regulation and governance of the forest sector.
Making remarks as head of Delegation of the European Union in Liberia, Nona Deprez, extended appreciation to the participants for their constructive participation and support throughout the JIC meeting last week.
She also expressed appreciation to the Co-chair of the meeting, Philip C. Parker, for his leadership and the efforts made by the FDA, Ministries, and government for the constructive and positive attitude of all stakeholders and the hard work of the facility unit and the technical team that made the meeting a success.
Deprez stressed that the technical section of the JIC meeting has been enriching in exchanges and debate, and they are taking some important steps to move forward.
“I really appreciate that the government strives to move things forward,” she said, “Particularly important to the European Union is the third distribution and the sharing of revenue among the forest communities.”
She emphasized the need of taking the 11th JIC decision to the next technical level, adding that Liberia implementation committee for the government needs to engage in in-depth discussion and payment of arrears, data reconciliation, tax credit, and performance bonds, because it is a very positive sign to strengthen sector governance.
According to her, she looks forward to the report and advancement at the 12th JIC meetings which is in progress and stressed that the concession review phase two and its recommendation are areas the EU perceives a potentially positive dynamic and further discussions are necessary at the level of data recovery.
According to her, the EU sincerely hopes that the recommendation containing the concession review will find a positive follow-up from the government of Liberia because it is important in view of the new developments in Europe, such as the new EU regulation on deforestation-free products.
“This regulation without doubt provides a significant challenge for Liberia, but we want to stand together to support you in responding to this challenge. It also stands without any doubt that much work is needed to comply with the rules of transparency and traceability inherent in the EU regulation on deforestation-free products,” she said.
“It is therefore necessary that we strongly recommend that the road map to compliance be adjusted to take into account the recommendation of the concession review phase two. Another major step of this 11th JIC is our principle agreement to start discussion and negotiations around confiscated and abandoned lots.”
She added that the EU recognizes the value of the Government of Liberia; it is also a very difficult issue centered around legality, and much work needs to be done on it, “but we can both be inspired by examples of other VPA countries where such agreements were reached, such as the recent case in Ghana, and I look forward to our exchanges on this in the coming months.”
Deprez also indicated that the 11th JIC meeting has shown the willingness of both sides to get stuck in the involving world and to seek solutions and responses to emerging trends together in unison.
“I am sure we will keep the spirit alive and move forward in improving and strengthening governance faster than we did in the past,” she stated. “The tools exist, and it is really up to us to improve them and then to use them. I want to reiterate the importance for the EU to support all stakeholders beside the government of Liberia; they also include the forest communities, civil society organizations, and private sector, but we also need to be clear about how we can and how we will support in compliance with Liberia laws, democracy, human rights, and in line with Liberia’s national and international commitments and in line with our values,” the EU boss noted.
Mr. Parker extended his appreciation to the participants at the 11th JIC meeting for attending the meeting and also expressed appreciation to the VPA Secretariat for their hard work in putting together the presentations, and making it possible for them to reach the end of the meeting.
He said that at the tenth and eleventh JIC meetings, the first agenda item for the high-level opening section was progress on benefit sharing, and another agenda item from both the tenth and eleventh JICs was the integration of community forest into the VPA legality matrix.
“During this JIC, however, we were informed that only one of the seventh forestry management contracts is operating. In addition to that, out of 57 forestry management contracts, only six are operating this and in the south is a red flag so that we have the benefit of sharing and talk about the legality of laws from a commercial point of view; we actually need to have some functioning commercial laws in activity.”
According to him, the levels at which they are now, suggest that there is an issue within that sector pointing out, “The sector needs to generate funds for the communities as well as Liberia. During this JIC, we also talked about emerging trends and emerging market trends, and we also talked about carbon sequestration and conservation, all of which are very important to Liberia as we move forward.”
He said the FDA will be looking at steps and programs to see how they can rejuvenate the forestry sector and how they can actually generate income in the short term, not sacrificing conservation efforts but starting to contribute to the government budget instead of it being a dream.
“The forestry sector has great potential, and I hope as we look to reach our flag licensing, where we will start to issue licenses to be able to export our logs to Europe and other parts of the world, we will take all of that into consideration,” he concluded.
