There are two questions I sorted out as being highlighted in this article:
- Malaysia claimed that EU has added non certification requirements including the prohibition of logging on Native Customary Rights land; human right protection and also questioning the Malaysian authorities credibility when issuing the timber licenses to local player.
- Whether the FLEGT Action Plan and timber regulation ploy by the EU to restrict tropical timber exports into its market?
What I thought about it:
- It is a blank point shooting saying adding human and land rights into Legality as non certification requirements. That was part of where illegal logs are source from. Illegal logging does not mean small holders logging without licenses in the forest, is it also concerning forest license holders harvesting at on natural forest land preserve by or for the local communities (native use). And to that is where questioning the Malaysian authorities credibility for issuing timber licenses to local player comes in.
- Last year, I attended a talk at BRE house in UK, the spoke person said their architect and designers will try to avoid using any tropical timber in designing BRE house, whether if it is FSC certified or not. The reason was they wouldn't want to risk when the house has been raised and when an environmental NGO's find one piece of wood had been somehow source from dispute or illegal origin, they would need to demolish the house! Say if this happen to a certified timber, what about just a legal verified timber?
The FLEGT system was established to ensure the tropical timber entering EU market is not illegally sourced. They may have use a more complicated (or stringent) system, but I would not be concern about if tropical timber will be a restricted from entering EU market. More importantly if Malaysia create can image that there is no questioning about the source of the local timbers being exported.
Just a thought.
Update: The column was posted in The Star newspaper dated 18 January 2012.
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