P l a t f o r m N e w s
Issue 5 – January 2005 – Quarterly newsletter of the EC Forest Platform
The EC Forest Platform is a FERN initiative that links peoples in the South and the European Community on aid and forest issues
Foreword
Dear Platform members,
2005 starts as a promising year for improvements in the way the European
Community funds forest projects. The European Commission has engaged in
stakeholder consultation to define its priorities for development co-operation
and the European Parliament is asking for accountability and civil society
participation within the newly proposed legislative package seeking to reform
the regulatory framework for EC aid expenditures. Now the opportunity has
arrived to get the procedures right and still give the Commission the
flexibility it needs to pursue development objectives.
Discussions
are advancing as well on the draft ‘Regulation
for a licensing scheme controlling the imports of timber into the EU’
and on the mandate that will be the basis for negotiating agreements with
partner countries (which will include
To submit
article proposals or reactions to news you see here contact Iola Leal Riesco at
iola@fern.org
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c o n t e n t s N e w p o l i c i e s from the EU N e w s f r o m around the
World R e s o u r c e s |
P l a t f o r m Debates
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1. |
By Edith Abilogo, EC Forest Platform focal point in Cameroon
On 8 December, the
President of the Republic reorganised the cabinet. As a result, the government
department that our main contacts belong to has changed. This in turn will
influence relationships maintained up to now between the Platform and state
institutions. From now on the old Ministry of Program, economical affairs and
Regional planning (MINPAT)* will become the Ministry of Planification, Program,
development and Regional planning (MINPDAT) (1).
The State Minister
Augustin Frederic Kodock will lead this government department instead of Martin
Okouda. The Ministry of Forest and Environment (MINEF) become two wallets: the
Ministry of Forests and Fauna (MINFOF) led by Hilmann Egbe Achuo, and the
Ministry of Environment and Nature conservation directed by Pierre Hili.
When reading the
missions reserved for these new ministries, you might get the impression that
they are only, for the moment, surface changes, because the terms of references
remain practically unchanged. It is true that some sections of the ex-ministry
of the Programming, Economical affairs and Regional planning have been
reorganised and given to new people, but without influencing the fields
targeted by the Platform.
We now have to wait for
the implementation of the new flow charts created by the government, to find
out what changes will be made that will affect the EC Forest Platform /
What is sure is that the Platform will have to create new contacts with
the people who will be in charge of the interesting fields.
(1) The abbreviation is not yet official
For information about
our national Platform activities and documents in Cameroon, or to actively join
the Platform, please contact our NGO focal point Edith Abilogo (abilogo@cedcameroun.org ), CED -
Centre pour l’Environnement et le Développement, Cameroon.
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2. |
EC Forest Platform members gathered in
After
one year of active involvement of civil society in evaluating the impact of
European Community cooperation on forests and forest dependent peoples, it was
clearly concluded that the Community has still got a long way to go fully
involve its civil society partners, and specially affected communities, in its
cooperation policies and projects. The lack of transparency and access to
information was a major second concern shared by both Indonesian and
Cameroonian participants, that face continuous constraints while trying to
access information on EC projects being implemented in their countries.
The
Platform welcomed Community efforts in the fight against the global trade in
illegal logging. The EU Action Plan on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and
Trade (FLEGT) was perceived as an important step towards the elimination of a
practice that makes timber producing countries lose around $US15 billion per
year in evasion of taxes, money that could otherwise be allocated to social
policies directed to poverty alleviation and sustainable use of natural
resources. Platform members expressed their intention to follow this process
closely and their will to be fully involved in the ongoing policy debates.
Sharing
concerns about the overall EU external actions efficiency and coherence,
Platform members called en masse for a Community proposal that will ensure that
EU actions contribute to sustainable development and poverty eradication.
Information about
the Strategy meeting, Platform resolutions and other statements are available
online at http://www.fern.org/pages/aid/platform.htm.
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3. FLEGT: The coming months will be crucial… |
The European
Commission presented a draft law to control the import of timber from producer
countries with whom the EU will have a partnership. At the moment, the
Commission hopes to develop partnership agreements with
The draft
law was presented to the Council in July 2004. It is expected that the Council
will adopt this law in the second half of 2005.
This law, once adopted, will be a purely technical document giving
customs power to halt non-licensed timber. This means that the debate on
crucial issues such as, ‘how are these partnership agreements negotiated?’, ‘are there minimum standards for what the
EU accepts as legal?’, ‘is
independent civil society monitoring a part of the monitoring process?’, ‘who defines what is legal in the context
of partnership agreements?’ and ‘will there be an action plan towards improvements in governance?’, are all part of the not yet properly started discussion on “what should be in a partnership agreements?”.
FERN and
over 150 NGOs from South and North presented a statement to the Council in
December (see links below). It said they believe there need to be clear
conditions for partnership agreements to make sure that actions to improve
forest management and secure land and tenure rights would be supported, rather
than undermined. This is not the case at the moment. As the proposals currently
stand the partnership agreements will:
1)
only deal with logs, sawnwood and plywood and
exclude all other products;
2)
will not deal with exports to other countries
than the EU –thereby facilitating illegal trade via third countries;
3)
will not require full participation of civil
society groups in negotiation of these agreements;
4)
do not make a clear distinction between
monitoring and verification and do not include independent civil society spot
check monitoring;
5)
are not based on proper and full assessment of
all forest laws, including customary laws, and therefore likely to reinforce
existing, in many cases destructive and unjust laws, and increase vulnerability
of marginal groups.
FERN believes that
without a process towards improved governance and forest law reform, focused on
sustainable forest management, with specific emphasis given to community
forestry, it is unlikely any voluntary partnership agreement will seriously
address illegal logging. Therefore without including specific safeguards as
well as clear requirements to exclude laundering via third countries, there is
a high chance that the current proposals will move the debate backwards and not
forwards.
To turn the argument
around, FERN – supported by Greenpeace and WWF - presented a document entitled Principles
for FLEGT Partnership Agreements
(see links below). The five key principles outlined in it are as
follows:
1.
Partnership agreements should be based on the
proper assessment of existing forest legislation (including customary law,
human rights law etc);
2.
Partnership agreements should be linked to a
time bound action programme moving towards sustainable forest management;
3.
Partnership agreements should be developed in
an inclusive process –involving NGOs and local communities- to draft partnership
agreements;
4.
Partnership agreements must specify that all
exported timber should be licensed (not just the exports to the EU);
5.
Partnership agreements must specify that
licensing must be based on independent verification of legality and allow for
civil society spot check monitoring as part of the process
FERN believes that IF
these key principles are taken on in the partnership agreements, there is a
clear possibility that the EU FLEGT process will be able to move the debate
forwards. The coming months will therefore be crucial to ensure the EU FLEGT
process will deliver positive actions to address illegal logging. If these five
principles will not be accepted the FLEGT process is very likely to backfire.
RELATED LINKS
EU FLEGT Action Plan:
The Action Plan (May 2003): http://europa.eu.int/comm/development/body/theme/forest/initiative/docs/Doc1-FLEGT_en.pdf#zoom=100
FERN’s analysis of the Action Plan and recommendations to
the Council (Jul 2003): http://www.fern.org/pubs/briefs/illegallog2.pdf
and http://www.fern.org/pubs/ngostats/AP_reccs.htm
Commission’s
series of briefing sheets on the FLEGT Action Plan. (Apr 2004): http://europa.eu.int/comm/development/body/theme/forest/initiative/briefing_sheets_en.htm
n
Joint NGO Statement (Dec 2004) Controlling timber imports into the EU: http://www.fern.org/
Licensing Scheme and Voluntary Partnership Agreements:
Proposal
for a Council Regulation concerning the establishment of a voluntary FLEGT
licensing scheme for imports of timber into the European Community (Jul 2004): http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/com/pdf/2004/com2004_0515en01.pdf
FERN,
Greenpeace and WWF comments on the draft Council Regulation concerning the
establishment of a voluntary FLEGT licensing scheme for imports of timber into
the European Community (Sep 2004): http://www.fern.org/
FERN, Greenpeace and WWF Principles for FLEGT Partnership Agreements (Jan 2005): http://www.fern.org/
NGO
positions:
Facing
Reality: how to halt the import of illegal timber in the EU. FERN, WWF and
Greenpeace (Apr 2004): http://www.fern.org/pubs/reports/facing_reality.pdf
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4. Revision of |
The Cotonou Agreement
is a trade and co-operation agreement between the EU and 77 African,
The revision is
negotiated on the basis of enhancing the implementation of a country and/or
region, and although the EU says it does not intend to alter the “acquis” of the Agreement the process is driven by the prospect of a) concretise some recent commitments […] undertaken by the EU,
notably on international security, b) improve […]
modalities for the implementation of aid and c) harmonise procedures and
working methods that organise the relationship between the EU and developing
countries.
So far negotiations
have had very little participation from member states, and were particularly
tense on a clause against terrorism (finally endorsed on 3 December 2004); the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (if introduced as an essential
element of the agreement that could translate in aid being suspended for not
co-operating with the EU); the support to the International Criminal Court; the
discussion on the use of art. 96 (ACP States have proposed to take into account
the position of the whole ACP group in the political dialogue as a means of
fighting the European unilateralism);
the redefinition of the role of the National Authorising Officer (the
Commission proposes to replace it by the Head of Delegation, a fact that would
empower the Commission while undermining the concept of ownership); and direct
access to funding (proposed changes would favour global initiative over
national and regional disbursement of funds).
A more fundamental
question remains as, depending on the scope of the revision, shouldn’t the
revised agreement be ratified by national and European Parliaments?
For
a more detailed analysis see
N e w p o l i c i e s from the EU
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5. Review of the EC Development Policy Statement |
On
19 January, the European Commission launched an Internet consultation process
of the European Community Development Policy. In the absence of policy
orientation in the proposed funding instrument for EC aid (see below Commission proposal raises fear over EC aid),
it is crucial to ensure that forest and forest peoples issues are being
included in this document.
The
current EC Development Policy Statement, which sets down the political
priorities of EC development co-operation, was signed-up to in 2000 by the Commission
and all EU Member States and with the absence of the European Parliament.
The
lack of broad consultation and the exclusion of Parliament raised complaints
throughout civil society. This time the Commission launched the consultation
before presenting its final position document. To focus the debate, it has
presented an issues paper that
identifies the issues the Commission considers key to the debate. The basis for
the consultation will be an online multiple-choice questionnaire based on this
document. A meeting with civil society will take place before the Internet
consultation process has ended on 2 March.
The
results of the consultation and a new policy proposal in the form of a
Commission Communication will be published by March/April 2005. The policy
document will be presented to the Council and Parliament aiming to get a joint
resolution by mid-2005.
Despite
recognising the major effort to improve the consultation process during this
revision, the Commission’s online questionnaire is biased and misleading. Furthermore,
although the issues paper is
available in English, French, Spanish and German, the questionnaire reduces its
availability to English and French, only languages in which responses are
accepted. As at least one major region has Spanish and Portuguese as its main
languages, this fact makes us wonder about the Commission’s interest in fully involving all its development partners in the
consultation.
To
help civil society organisations the EC Forest Platform will provide an
analysis of the review process in the next few weeks and produce a Brief note on the issue. In the
meantime, if you would like to send in your thoughts, we encourage you to avoid
the online questionnaire and do it directly by emailing dev-ipm-consultations@cec.eu.int
RELATED
LINKS
Current
Development Policy Statement (Nov 2000) http://europa.eu.int/comm/development/body/legislation/docs/council_statement.pdf
Commission’s
consultation site http://europa.eu.int/comm/development/body/theme/consultation/index_en.htm <http://europa.eu.int/comm/development/body/theme/consultation/index_en.htm>
Commission’s Issues Paper (Jan 2005) http://europa.eu.int/comm/development/body/theme/consultation/doc/Issues_Paper_EN.pdf
Late
2004 saw a Commission’s proposal for a major restructure of EC aid. The draft, as it
stands, is open to allowing a shift of funds away from the poorest countries
and towards those in which the EU has a clear economic and/or political
interest: all at the discretion of the Commission.
The
proposed framework for funding aid-related issues would reduce down to just six
financial instruments the current array of geographic and thematic budget lines
(see Platform
News issue 4). A considerable
change from current practice is the fact that the new funding instruments
proposed (including one on development co-operation) does not cover policy
priorities or programming. Those would be developed by the Commission and the
Council via various policies or through programming documents such as Country
Strategy Papers or Regional Strategy Programmes – EC frameworks for
co-operation with a country or region.
Although
more flexibility in aid spending is needed, the proposed changes would hand
over key powers from the EU’s only democratically elected body – the Parliament – to its executive body – the Commission. This leaves the Commission free to define
priorities for co-operation with no obligation to consult civil society (1).
Another
concern is the Commission’s intention to reduce the number of budget lines (2). There are
concerns that bringing down the number of budget lines to a minimum would
translate in a high flexibility inside the instrument, leading to the
possibility of transferring money within the different areas from co-operation.
A proposal is expected in the next few months, but forest-related issues should
be clearly reflected in the budget lines nonetheless.
The
Development Committee of the European Parliament is currently drafting a report
on the umbrella funding instrument for development where it will reject the
proposal and ask the Commission to present a new document. As the final
decision for rejection would need to be decided by the whole Parliament, it is
hoped that the continuum backstage debates between the two institutions would
succeed in getting the Commission to rethink its position.
(1) FERN has produced a Briefing note clarifying
the changes introduced by the new proposal (see links below)
(2) Financial instruments are broken down in
budget lines, which are the instruments through which funds are allocated to an
specific area (e.g. the forests budget line, a thematic area under the
financial instrument for development co-operation, would set down the basis for
fund disbursal to projects aiming preserve forests or attain sustainable
forests management)
RELATED LINKS
Commission
proposal establishing an
Instrument for Development Co-operation and Economic Co-operation (Sep 2004) http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/com/pdf/2004/com2004_0629en01.pdf
FERN Briefing to understand the main elements of the Commission proposal All change: a proposal for a new instrument
on development and economic co-operation (Dec 2004): http://www.fern.org/pubs/briefs/all%20change%20with%20head.pdf
Joint NGO position on the Commission
N e w s f r o m around the
World
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7. Commission moves into offices built with illegal timber |
In October
2004, the European Commission finished renovations in its
The
Commission promised a full enquiry, but has still not concluded its
investigation into the origins of its timber, sanctioned its contractors or
cleaned up its contracting policy. Furthermore, Indonesian plywood was still
being delivered to the construction site after the initial revelation. Illegal
logging is estimated to represent 70 per cent of log production in
The European
Commission has committed to make the EU a champion of global forest protection
by not buying wood from unsustainable or illegal sources, and by ensuring that
illegal wood does not enter the EU (see ‘FLEGT ’ above).But the Commission has so
far failed to reform its own purchasing and contracting policy to prevent
similar situations from happening again. Furthermore, its newly published
handbook on environmental public procurement “Buying Green” advises, in
contradiction with the existing Directive -EU law- on the issue, not to address
‘the protection of forest dependent people’ in their tenders for public procurement purchases (2).
It goes on:
the Commission is missing a deadline to present a draft law recognizing illegal
logging and its related trade as an environmental crime (see ‘FLEGT ’ above).
(1) Paul Toyne, Cliona O’Brien and Rod Nelson
(June 2002) The timber footprint of the
G8 and
(2) See FERN’s 2004 analysis of the Directive.
RELATED LINKS
For
full press releases and briefings of 11 May 2004 and 14 May 2004 see http://eu.greenpeace.org/issues/forests.html
Public Procurement
Directive
2004/18/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the coordination of
procedures for the award of public works contracts, public supply contracts and
public service contracts ( Mar 2004) http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2004/l_134/l_13420040430en01140240.pdf
EC
Handbook on environmental public procurement ‘Buying green’ (Oct 2004) http://europe.eu.int/comm/environment/gpp/
FERN (Jan 2004) To
Buy or Not to Buy. Available at http://www.fern.org/pubs/reports/procure.pdf
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8. NGOs demand EU support in fighting illegal
logging in the Delta areas of |
Nineteen Nigerian NGOs and four
international organisations have urged the EU to take action against illegal
logging in the country’s
WEMPCO subsidiary in the
Protecting the environment and promoting
good governance, improving transparency and combating corruption are
established priorities of EU co-operation with
The EU didn’t take side on the issue during a Senior Official Meeting on 8
December 2004. Moreover the Presidency noted, in its response to the NGO
letter, that it is not in a position to
intervene in the relationship between the Nigerian authorities and foreign
companies owned by nationals of a country […] which is not a member of the OECD.
The issue of governance was nonetheless
discussed at the meeting on 8 December and the WEMPCO issue mentioned, showing
that both the EU and
(1) Stated in the Country
Strategy Paper 2001-2007. Available at http://europa.eu.int/comm/development/body/csp_rsp/scanned/ng_csp_en.pdf#zoom=100
(2) OECD: Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development
RELATED LINKS
For joint NGO letter to the EU
Presidency see http://www.fern.org/pubs/ngostats/River%20State%20Rainforests%2011.04.pdf
See EC response to the NGO letter
at http://www.fern.org/pubs/platform/Nigeria%20EU%20response%20Dec%202004.pdf
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9. Forest Watch |
Forest Watch
The lack of law enforcement by the
Forestry Commission loses
The figures speak for themselves: if the
aforementioned $US100 million were integrated into the
- 90 per
cent of
- more
than the annual National Health Scheme levy;
- more
than the annual Ghana Education Trust-fund levy
(1) This estimation of the Forest
Watch
For more information on the Campaign
contact Alhassan Adam, Forest Watch
R e s o u r
c e s
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10. Understanding EU intricacies: new briefings and publications |
All change: a
proposal for a new instrument on development and economic co-operation (Dec 2004): A FERN briefing note to understand the main
elements of the Commission
Europe and North
Asia FLEG: a key task for civil society (Dec 2004): This FERN/TRN briefing introduces the latest
development in the European and North Asian governments
A Guide to EU funding: Accessing
What is
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11. What is the EC |
In July 2002 FERN launched the EC (European Community) Forest Platform. The Platform’s aim is to ensure that EC development co-operation (10 per cent of the world Official Development Assistance) has a positive impact on forests and forest peoples. Its main goals are to:
- Give a voice to
NGOs and forest peoples who want to present their issues to the European
Community;
- Debate the impacts
of EC aid policies and projects on forests and forest peoples;
- Provide EC policy
makers with ‘on the ground’ information on forests
and forest peoples;
- Encourage greater
co-operation and dialogue between EU based NGOs and Southern NGOs,
community-based organisations and indigenous peoples organisations.
Platform activities should contribute to a better implementation of commitments made by the European Commission in regard to development co-operation, environmental integration and recognition of civil society as an active partner. Exchanges between European-based Environmental NGOs and Southern NGOs should contribute to raise awareness among Northern Environmental NGOs about development-related problems faced by people in the South.
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For more information or to become a member of the EC Forest Platform, visit our website http://www.fern.org/pages/aid/platform.htm or send an e-mail to the Platform co-ordinator, Iola Leal Riesco, iola@fern.org |