PWPA at the FAO FLEGT Programme Workshop
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) – Forest Management Bureau implements the “Forest Law Enforcement, Governance, and Trade (FLEGT) Programme” project supported by the Food Agriculture Office (FAO) of the United Nations. As a part of its implementation, a multi-stakeholder consultation workshop was held last January 17-18, 2017 at The Linden Suites, Pasig City. It was attended by representatives from the FAO, the government, other government agencies, non-government organizations, and the private sector.
FAO’s Regional Office for Asia and Pacific’s Forestry Officer Bruno Cammaert provided the project background and objectives and the reflection on past and renewed FAO FLEGT support and introduction to the situational analysis.
He said that the FAO FLEGT Program 2016-2020 is an improved local programme ownership and integration for better planning, implementation and monitoring of programme support; it works closely with the private sector to define and address their greatest bottlenecks to producing legal timber; for VPA and key non VPA countries; step up collaboration and synergies with other forest sector initiatives such as REDD+, CITES, voluntary certification, among others; and strategic engagement with consumer countries and promotion of south-south cooperation.
Chamber of Furniture Industries of the Philippines Executive Director Salvio Valenzuela and FAO FLEGT consultant Gualberto Tortoza presented the draft Guidebook on Requirements for Chain-of-Custody Systems and Monitoring Compliance in the Philippines while Carl Ronnow’s Richard Anning and IDC ELDF Oscar Carrasco discussed the Building Capacity for Training and Auditing Chain-of-Custody Systems, both projects were funded by FAO FLEGT Programme.
Other presenters include NEPCon’s Southeast Asia Regional Manager Christian Schiver who gave an independent review of the CFIP Guidebook; FMB’s Forest Protection Section Chief Raul Briz, the Current Initiatives on Timber Traceability; and FAO FLEGT consultant Tortoza, the results of their situational analysis and assessment on Forest Governance and on the Private Sector.
The activity prioritization for the programme was done in a workshop by the different stakeholders where capacity building was identified as one of the priority activities that could be funded by the Programme.
The different activities that were identified for the implementation of the Philippine Forest Certification System were included in the priority activities.
As a way forward, the members of the Technical Working Group on Wood (TWGW) were expanded to include other important stakeholders. Advisers and observers were also identified.
The TWGW will be chaired by the DENR/FMB and will be co-chaired by the PWPA with DTI, CFIP, PCEPSDI, IFMAP, among other as members.