Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, the President of Indonesia met today with UK Prime Minister David Cameroon, during a business-focus tour of Europe. With this occasion, EIA (Environmental Investigation Agency) is urging Jokowi to support the commitment made in a process of ensuring that only legal timber and products are exported from the country.
The Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan was created to work against the illegal loggings and illegal timber trades happening in the country since 1999. Thus, the plan included measures to prohibit such actions, by also discovering the root cause of the illegal loggings.
“More than a decade of hard work and negotiations is coming to fruition and we’re likely just months away from seeing the first FLEGT-approved timber imports from Indonesia. Although there remains a lot of work to do, the FLEGT process gives us grounds for cautious optimism that forest crime can be addressed effectively,” said Faith Doherty, the EIA Forest Campaign Team Leader.
Moreover, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which started the investigations leading to the instauration of FLEGT, obliged the Indonesian Government to ensure full implementation of the Timber Legality Assurance System (TLAS) to cover all timber sources, particularly conversion timber, which accounts for a significant proportion of the whole of Indonesia’s timber production, as One World News reported.
Jokowi released a statement last week and said that the government will build up a moratorium on oil palm and mining permits, together with an audit of current permits. Thus, as Doherty explained, if the moratorium will be implemented properly, it will support the change of natural forests to oil palm plantations, along with tracking the illegalities.
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