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Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and
Trade (TFLET)
Illegal activities in the forest sector continue to add
to the degradation of forests and undermine the contribution of the forest
sector to employment generation and social and economic development and
poverty alleviation. An unknown volume of timber is illegally felled,
processed and traded. Forest operations conducted outside the law may
under-value the resource on which they are based, resulting in the degradation
of the resource and a lack of optimal socioeconomic benefits for local
people. Several factors contribute to the occurrence of illegal timber
harvesting, such as an ineffective policy and legal framework, a lack
of enforcement capacity, insufficient data about the forest resource and
illegal operations, and a high demand for cheap timber. Cooperation between
producer and consumer countries is needed.
The International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA), negotiated
in 2006, includes commitments to: strengthening the capacity of members
to improve forest law enforcement and governance and address related trade
in tropical timber; improving the marketing and distribution of tropical
timber and timber product exports from sustainably managed and legally
harvested sources; contributing to sustainable development and poverty
alleviation; and recognizing the role of forest-dependent indigenous and
local communities in achieving sustainable forest management and developing
strategies to enhance the capacity of these communities to sustainably
manage timber-producing forests.
In 2007 the Council approved a pilot of the TFLET Thematic
Programme. The objectives of that pilot, as well as the projects and activities
under implementation, will be integrated into the Thematic Programmes
to be developed under this profile, taking into account the administrative
arrangements put in place for the existing programme.
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