First FLEGT license ready early next year

Dr Richard Gyimah, Manager, Verification and Audit Timber Validation Department at the Forestry Commission, has said Ghana may be ready to issue its first Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) license early 2016

FLEGT is a kind of legality assurance system that Ghana joined, as part of signing the Voluntary Partnership Agreement with the European Union.

The Voluntary Partnership Agreements is a legally binding agreement between the European Union and Timber Producing Countries like Ghana to ensure that timber and timber products exported to the EU comes from a legal source

Dr Gyimah said the FLEGT license is part of the process to give every timber from Ghana a legal identity saying “Legality verification is now a routine at the Forestry Commission

He was speaking at a workshop organised by Civic Response, an NGO, for media personnel on Forest Governance.

Explaining why the Forestry Commission had not been able to issue its first FLEGT License, Dr Gyimah said the Commission designed a process which was assessed but there were a few gaps to be filled to enable the country qualify to issue the license

“If we are able to pass the second assessment test, then we should be issuing our first FLEGT license early next year,” he said.

He said one of the initial challenges the Forestry Commission faced with regard to the VPA and the issuing of the FLEGT license was the electronic systems that had to be used, explaining: “We depend on the mobile telephone’s network to input data on the trees, sometimes, you all know how our mobile networks can go off and on.”

Dr Gyimah said the Forestry Commission is, therefore, implementing a semi-electronic system where timber loggers could input their data manually and later transferred to the electronic platforms

The FLEGT processes began formally in Ghana in 2003 when Ghana signed on to the African Forest Law Enforcement and Governance (AFLEG) mechanism in Cameroon.

In 2005, through an International Union for Conservation of Nature initiative, Ghana’s implementation of its commitment to the AFLEG processes was discussed and it was acknowledged that Ghana had not made any progress in its commitment to AFLEG.

The Voluntary Partnership agreement was seen by CSOs as another vehicle to push forest governance in the country forward and thus it was welcomed with the condition that the process would involve complete stakeholder participation at every stage.

Formal negotiations for a VPA began in December, 2006 and it was finally concluded and ratified in parliament in March 2010.