Why would SALT attend a meeting about forest legality? To learn. What can our community learn from work to stop the illegal timber trade? A lot, as it turns out.
The third annual World Resources Institute (WRI) Forest Legality Week was hosted in Washington, DC from October 8-10. The WRI Forest Legality Initiative was a founding inspiration for SALT. Originally developed by USAID with other U.S. government partners, the Forest Legality Alliance has now transitioned and carries on important work in illegal logging.
The overwhelming commonality between the two fields is that traceability is a key solution to address illegal behaviors. Some observations and takeaways:
Other interesting questions and thoughts
- How can governments model Norway? Norway uses its International Climate and Forest Initiative to firmly pursue conservation — withdrawing or reducing aid funds dramatically if targets or behaviors are not being met in countries where they invest.
- Should philanthropic funds support law enforcement? The question was asked since there are big issues around enforcement capacity: could donor funds be used to further support that capacity? The answer was that it hasn’t been thus far.
At the event, WRI launched the Open Timber Portal which intends to reward good actors throughout the supply chain and expose information on those who are not. Funded by DFID, Norway, USAID and others: “OTP brings transparency to timber operations. It makes public previously inaccessible information about on-the-ground management practices and compliance with timber legality requirements. It compiles information from three different sources: official concession boundaries and the list of registered forest operators from the government; documents uploaded voluntarily by forest operators to demonstrate compliance; and observations by third party forest monitors.“
On the final day, SALT Advisory Committee member Giuliana Torte presented on the EU policies on legality in timber and drew a parallel to IUU fishing – bringing my participation full circle. You can find the full agenda here or reach out to WRI if you have more questions.
Should SALT host something similar to this week-long forestry event for learning, but for Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing? Let us know your thoughts.