The European Union (EU) isn't able (or willing) to get the idea of Forests issues...

Forests / Waelder: Deforestation, Abholzung, Illegal logging, Illegale Holzschlägerungen, FLEG

July, 19, 2010 - The EU (the European Parliament) has approved legislation which prohibits the sale of timber logged illegally under the rules of the country of origin. In addition, companies must use a system of 'due diligence' to ascertain that the timber they sell in the EU was harvested legally. The European Council has already agreed to support the legislation and is expected to formally adopt it in September 2010.

What is, by its core intention, a good cause.  A lot of eNGOs, news media and others applauded. We do as well.

Nevertheless, the way how EU is communicating this latest attainment is quite questionable. But let’s start at the beginning of the path:
From the very first beginning when EU started to take care of illegal logging presentation of the whole issue was inconsistent

Later on, when IPCCC realized the role of deforestation in global CO2 emissions and REDD was born, EU started to communicate its efforts in combating illegal logging as main weapon against deforestation.Illegal logging was named to be the main source and force of deforestation.

Meanwhile EU granted a lot of European tax money to EFI to support the European bureaucracy and the European Parliament in development of the new Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA) and the system of Timber Due Diligence. The same time ForestIndustries.EU started its information campaign on reliable illegal logging communication.

The next time when the EU published information about FLEGT the communication was changed slightly but was still fundamentally misleading. This time honorable EFI was in duty to support the EU in publishing illegal timber trade facts. These facts were taken to conceal the real dimension of the EU FLEGT activity.

The preliminary final chapter was opened these days, when EU published a Q&A regarding FLEGT, VPA’s, Illegal logging, Deforestation and REDD+:

Within this article we get informed by EU that the drivers of deforestation and illegal logging are pretty the same:

The governance and market failures which drive illegal logging are much the same as those that drive deforestation. The constraints to tackling deforestation are the same as those we face in tackling illegal logging: unclear and contested tenure of land and forests, lack of institutional capability, weak regulatory capacity, and corruption. FLEGT and REDD both require multi-stakeholder processes that build a shared commitment; systems for monitoring, reporting and verification that are credible; buyers who have confidence in the products they are paying for. Thus, key to tackling deforestation is establishing good governance and FLEGT can help to achieve this.

What is wrong with this?
EU is not naming the drivers of illegal logging and deforestation. EU just mentioned circumstances and enablers of deforestation and illegal logging.

The real drivers of deforestation and illegal logging (based on globally accepted facts) are:

More than 75% of deforestation is done because of land use change from forests to agriculture (~60% because of poverty = small scale agriculture, 40% by industrial agriculture). So agriculture is the main driver of deforestation. Timber logging is responsible for the remaining 25% of global deforestation (illegal logging counts for less than 10% of global deforestation).
The drivers of illegal logging are local fuelwood harvesting (~75% because of poverty by rural/urban poor) and timber sales (~25% by profiteers).

Let us resume:
Some months ago, EU communicated illegal logging as the main source and force of deforestation. Nowadays (July 2010) EU has found illegal logging is not any more a driver to deforestation. Furthermore illegal logging and deforestation are going to have the same drivers.
What comes next? Deforestation as a main driver of illegal logging?
Joking apart – this topic is too serious to make jokes about it – three main findings can be clearly identified:

• Honorable EFI has failed to establish a reliable PR strategy for public communication of the EU FLEGT programme
• EU bureaucracy is still struggling to understand specific forest related issues like illegal logging, deforestation and REDD+ and communicates chaotic
• Possibly there is a system behind this chaotic and inconsistent communication policy of the EU…

Disclaimer: We fully support any activity to stop illegal logging and we are against any unsustainable land use or land use change. But we are in the oppinion that every campaing must be honestly, reliable and has to bring the real facts on the table. We think this was not done in the case described above...