The
Timber Legality Assurance System (LAS) of the VPA is to monitor, control and
verify management and use of Ghana’s forest resources to ensure only legal
products are produced, sold and exported from Ghana.
The
meeting between the CSOs and EU would discuss among others the list of priority
transparency issues expected to be made available by government and the
Forestry Commission.
Top
of agenda would be the conversion of expired concession and leases, as
explained by Samuel Mensah Mawutor, Coordinator of Forest Watch Ghana, a
coalition of NGOs campaigning for improved forest governance.
“The
law that brought the timber contracts system [in 1997] said within a period of
six months all the old concessions should be converted to be contract. However,
up till now the conversion hasn’t happened,” he observed.
Mr.
Mawutor expects government to prioritize the issue and ensure talks with
industry are concluded as quickly as possible because “if the conversion doesn’t
happen, Ghana will not have the legal basis to export timber outside.”
Ghana
is among few countries to have added the domestic lumber market in the Voluntary
Partnership Agreement with the European Union. But attempts to restructure the
domestic market have not been easy.
Mr.
Mawutor is hopeful the domestic timber market reform would yield efforts when
the export market is streamlined.
He
also says local communities must have incentives to plant and protect trees,
develop farming systems that integrate trees into food crop production and
encourage private plantations.
Story
by Kofi Adu Domfeh
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