To develop a forest law enforcement community of practice able to conduct international controlled delivery operations that would help bring timber and wildlife smugglers to justice. and reduce international trade and trafficking in illicit forest products.
PROFOR has uploaded a new tool on its website which should be of interest to a variety of exporters, wood associations and specialists: the VERITAS Timber Volume Calculator. This product could potentially be used globally by forest stakeholders to complement verification of timber legality and chain of custody initiatives -- by helping to identify red flags or anomalies in timber flow data and accounts.
Colleagues from the World Bank Africa region worked with IUCN to document what is happening to a corner of the vast tropical forest in Cameroon, seen from the perspective of the Baka people. The 9-mn movie is embedded here.
Once transformed into an amorphous bundle of planks, wood can be hard to identify let alone certify as legal or sustainably-harvested. The ambition of Double Helix Tracking Technologies is to apply genetics to forests and the timber supply chain.
Forests may be at risk in the immediate aftermath of conflict when myriad demands -- from government, local populations, commercial timber operations, as well as donors -- go uncoordinated. A new collection of analytical work on forests, fragility and conflict (published in June) could contribute to a more strategic approach to dealing with forest management in post-conflict operations.
On May 4th, Indonesia concluded Voluntary Partnership Agreement negotiations with the European Union. This marked the culmination of a long process toward establishing a legality verification system in the country and an important milestone for forest governance reform.
An event organized by Forest Trends in Washington DC
