Launch of the Forest Footprint Disclosure Project

15 June 2009

Speech

Minister of State Gareth Thomas speaking at DFID on 15 June 2009

Ladies and gentlemen it is a pleasure to welcome you to DFID for the launch of the Forest Footprint Disclosure Project.

Let me start by giving some context for today’s discussion.

Forests are fundamental for the jobs, incomes and livelihoods of 90% of the one and a half billion people who live in extreme poverty around the world.

Up to 20% of all carbon emissions are caused by deforestation in the tropics and subtropics – more than from the whole of the global transport sector.

In the past 50 years, the world has lost a third of its tropical forests, and continues to lose some 13 million hectares of tropical forest each year - an area larger than Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark combined.

And we know that the pressure on forests is not lessening, it’s actually increasing.

The challenge we face today is to find new ways to reconcile the competing demands for wood, for food, for fuel, for biodiversity conservation and, crucially, reduced emissions from deforestation - and furthermore, to prevent global demand for cheaper food and fuel from driving unsustainable agricultural expansion.

We also have a crucial role to play as consumers in reducing the demand for goods which rely on deforestation for their production.

So, as we go forward, there are I believe, five key areas on which we need to focus our attention.

Firstly, we need more secure rights governing who can control, use and benefit from forests.

Last year, in the Papua Province of Indonesia, for example, civil society groups demanded a halt to all new Palm Oil plantation deals until their land rights were protected in legislation.
I think we need to work with local groups like these to help them gain recognition of their rights – and allow communities to get back control of their livelihoods.

Protecting forests is actually hardest where governance is weak – so we have to build the capacity to formulate and enforce better laws and regulations to help protect forests. 

So, for example, one of the things the UK is already doing, is supporting the international Rights and Resource Initiative (RRI), which seeks to advance tenure rights and regulatory reforms in the sector.

We are also helping to overcome weak governance through our country programmes, such as in the Congo Basin, where we are promoting community land tenure rights that can be protected by legislation.

Secondly, we need more countries to adopt rigorous international standards for certifying forests which are managed in a sustainable way.

Some 320 million hectares of the world’s forests have been certified as sustainably managed since the early 1990s.
But most of these forests are in Europe and North America.
Barely one tenth of one per cent of forests in Africa and Asia have been certified.

So clearly we need to take that certification process a lot further.

For example, the UK is supporting the development of better regulation through the Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade programme, which is helping countries like Ghana, Cameroon, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and also Indonesia to strengthen forest law enforcement and governance as an essential first step to achieving sustainable forest management.

Thirdly, as I already indicated, we need to become more responsible consumers – so that our procurement practices do not indirectly accelerate the depletion of tropical forests.

I first saw the impact of the demand for tropical timber in Cameroon some years ago, just after I’d been appointed as minister.

And the local chief told me when I visited, that poorly controlled logging, much of it, as he told me, for the European market, damaged farms as well as the forests the villagers relied on.

In the UK, we are one of the world’s biggest importers of tropical timber, our public procurement policy requires all government departments to buy only timber products that have been recognised as sustainable.

We also need to work with trade federations across Europe to improve the purchasing practices of their members in the same way, as we have here in the UK.

And to avoid simply displacing trade in illegal and sustainable products to other countries, we also need to work with other big importing countries.

Japan, Australia and New Zealand have all introduced new responsible purchasing policies for timber products as a result.
The United States has introduced legislation which makes it an offence to handle timber produced in contravention of a country’s laws.

And in China we are seeing some progress too: It will, for example, in September host an International Conference and Business Round Table on Legal and Certified Forests.

The fourth area we need to focus attentions, is the need for better due diligence in the private sector, and we need businesses to be informed and discerning about their impact on forests.

Improved due diligence for forestry investments by banks such as JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America has already had a significant influence on investment in the pulp and paper sector in Asia through tighter lending conditions that are based on the sustainability of supply chains.

Unilever and other members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) have committed to using only Palm Oil from sources that are certified as being sustainable. Certified Palm Oil is already earning a price premium of about $50 a tonne. DFID, together with Defra and FCO has agreed to support the round table in trying to develop their scheme still further.

And crucially the initiative we are launching today will help companies identify more clearly the implications of their investment and their marketing decisions.

Finally, we need to work in partnership with developing and emerging economies around the world to support their own initiatives to protect fragile forest ecosystems.

In the last 12 months Brazil has cut credit to illegal ranchers and farmers and impounded beef and soya products from deforested areas.

It has also struck deals with timber and grain wholesalers and banks to boycott products of illegal origin.  Credit systems for small businesses have been realigned to favour more sustainable approaches. The City and the State of São Paulo have a well established procurement policy which favours certified timber products.

And the UK too is supporting a new Brazilian Initiative on Independent Certification to voluntarily certify agriculture and livestock, and to help ensure that they are sustainably farmed.

It is measures like these that are making a difference to the conservation of the world’s forests, and helping to reduce the carbon emissions caused by deforestation. But we need to go further, quite clearly.

We need to be transparent about our aims.
We need to be clear that protecting forests doesn’t mean creating trade barriers which would unfairly disadvantage developing countries.

And finally, something I know many of you are also concerned with, we need payments for the services that forests provide as well as the products they produce.

In short, it is only by working together – governments, businesses, and NGOs – that we can achieve the changes that are necessary to protect the future of the world's forests.

I am very glad that DFID has been able to help you in getting this initiative started. It is innovative, it will be challenging for businesses to take part in but it will be one crucial measure that will be able to help the world’s poorest.