Is Ghana's FLEGT VPA grinding to a halt...? Discussion of challenges continues

I continue the discussion of the challenges of the Ghana FLEGT VPA process and why I believe there is need for urgent and coherent action by all stakeholders to steer the VPA on the path to deliver some real gains in forest governance. Today I will focus on the issue of non-conversion of logging leases to Timber Utilization Contracts according to the requirement of the Timber Resources Management

2.3     Non-conversion of “old” leases to Timber Utilization Contracts (TUCs)

The coming into force of the Timber Management Act (Act 547, 1998) and Amendment Act (Act 617, 2002) obliged the government to convert all old leases[1] (pre 1997) which were granted timber companies into the new permit type (i.e. TUC). An important reason for the introduction of the law was to block all the leakages of revenue losses to government and forest stakeholders from exploitation of timber resources and also to ensure the right market price are paid for timber. Ghana’s legality matrix recognizes the TUC and not the leases as a legal permit type for harvest of timber for domestic and international trade. The VPA thus enforces an obligation on government to convert all these leases into TUC and for the right timber rent fees to be charged. Since the coming into force of the law, this conversion has not been done because of struggles between the industry and government on technicalities and alleged illegal legitimacy (or locus) of government to do so. So far the government has been weak in dealing with this challenge even upon persistent pressure from CSOs[2]. A handful of TUCs have actually been granted by the Forestry Commission (62 out of over 800)[3]. Majority of permits are salvage permits, TUPs, leases and special permits. This is maintaining the status-quo and ensuring that poor forest communities are subsidizing the operations of timber companies. This means that by continuing to operate these permits, Ghana will flood the market with timber that cannot be given a FLEGT license and this will cause a delay in the date of issuing FLEGT licensed timber to Europe and other markets.  This will not only have an impact on the domestic market but also questions Ghana’s political commitment to implementing the VPA negotiated with the EU in 2008.

---

[1] Leases were another permit type but this was outlawed by the Timber Resources Management Regulation, 2003. The leases were not granted upon competitive bidding processes. Also the TUC had different regimes for revenue collection to ensure that government maximizes its economic benefit from the exploitation of the resource

[2] CSOs also raised the issue at the 4^th JMRM of the VPA held from 13^th -16^th March, 2012. Available at the Forestry Commission website, www.fcghana.org. This is in addition to the letters sent to the FC and MLNR by FWG to protest the administrative abuse of the salvage permits.

[3] The information is sourced from Global Witness analysis of official Ghana logging permits lists which shows that three quarters of Ghana’s logging permits could break Europe’s new timber law. It is available at http://www.globalwitness.org/ghanapermits