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Wood industry to tackle illegal logging
Representatives from the timber industry have emphasised the need to ensure that the relevant national action plan follows the example of the European Union forestry policy, which has clamped down on the consumption of wooden products made from illegally-logged timber.
This was also the goal of a workshop held in Ho Chi Minh City on October 14, organised by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Dutch Development Organisation.
The EU is one of the major markets for Vietnam’s wooden products industry, which last year earned US$2.4 billion from exports, according to MARD’s International Cooperation Department deputy director Tran Kim Long. This figure is expected to increase to US$3 billion this year and US$3.4 billion by 2010, Long said.
Vietnam has emerged as the second- largest exporter of wood in Southeast Asia and is the fourth-largest in the world.
An increasing demand for wood products in Europe, North America and East Asia has forced these nations to create legal and economic mechanisms to prevent the importation of any products made of illegally-logged timber and to encourage imports of those from legal logging sources.
The Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) is just one of the tools being applied by seven EU members, namely Holland, Great Britain, Denmark, France, Belgium and Spain, according to Hugh Speechly from the UK’s Department for International Development.
To meet FLEGT standards and boost imports to the EU, Vietnam’s wood industry is planning to reduce its imports of timber from the current figure of 80 percent to total demand to 20 percent by 2020 through increased afforestation, according to the forestry development strategy for 2006-2020.
VOV
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