Africa Plans Hardwood Certification Program
Copyright 2000 Inter Press Service
October 20, 2000
By Nana Rosine Ngangoue
African timber exporters and producers are beginning to develop methods to certify their wood as coming from forests managed using environmentally-sound logging practices.
Facing boycott pressures from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and environmental groups, experts from the African Timber Organization (ATO) and government ministers from countries belonging to the grouping met in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo recently to hammer out the process by which rare tropical African woods will be accredited.
In 2001, a pan-African certification bureau is expected to commence operations in Libreville, Gabon, for lumber coming from the 14 ATO-member countries. It will also be in charge of encouraging member countries to coordinate their forestry management policies, especially in the area of forestry planning.
In addition to Republic of Congo and Gabon, Cameroon, Cote D'Ivoire, the Central African Republic, Ghana, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, and Tanzania are also members of the ATO. Togo was admitted as the newest member last week.
The certification bureau will function in collaboration with the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) and the World Wildlife Federation (WWF). NGO representatives, governments, and the international community will also be involved in the project.
The African continent has many species of tropical woods that fetch high prices on the world market. Ebony, okoume, mahogany, iroko, and sapelli are just some of the varieties growing in the mountainous forest regions of the Congo basin of Central Africa. Several ATO countries also export teak.
Environmentalists say that many of these woods, such as mahogany, are endangered species. In spite of the large quantities of precious timber available, Africa is having a hard time selling its wood on the world market because of environmentalist claims that logging on the continent is out of control.
Africa, home to almost one-third of the word's tropical forests, provides only about 10 percent of the world's wood supply, and receives only about 14 percent of the world's revenues attributable to wood. Only 1 percent of the world's wood which has been transformed in some way through manufacturing comes from Africa.
Experts say that the pan-African certification project will provide assurances to an increasingly ecology-minded public that their tropical woods have been logged in a sustainable and responsible manner.
According to experts, the goal of the certification project will be to provide woods exported from the continent with distinctive labelling indicating it originated in Africa. It will also identify the wood as having being forested according to environmentally-sound logging practices.
Although the certification project has been generally well- received, some still have doubts as to how credible the claims will be.
"For such a label to be credible, everyone needs to get on board this project, including the private sector," stated Henri Djombo, the Congolese Minister of Forests.
The ATO maintains that certification process will observe the strict standards of the 1993 Principles, Criteria, and Indicators (PCI) treaty for the sustainable management of forests, and that appropriate planning procedures will also have to be certified.
Through the ATO, African countries have been organizing since 1993 around the "green label" project, the goal of which is sustainable forestry management and the creation of a credible and independent governing body to certify wood products.
The project strives to strengthen co-operation among member countries on issues of renewable forestry resources, to help co-ordinate forestry policy and legislation, and to defend Africa's special needs and interests in the world debate over forests.
To this end, the PCI was developed as an instrument for countries to use in order to clarify and formulate goals for sustainable forestry development. These principles encompass the political, environmental, economic and cultural aspects of forestry management.
Since 1995, PCI-based guidelines have been developed in five ATO member countries: Cote D'Ivoire, Cameroon, Gabon, the Central African Republic, and Ghana, and, reportedly, the results have been encouraging.
The elements of the PCI will constitute the groundwork of the certification procedure.
"The certification process will be a serious operation, and the stamp of approval will only be granted after we have been able to verify that the forest is well planned and properly managed," stated Djombo, who called upon all ATO member countries to join the project.
The cost of the new project has not yet been determined. According to sources close to the ATO, the European Union has promised to provide substantial financial support.
"The European Union has already demonstrated its ability and expertise in this area. It has promised to provide financial aid, since Europe is the world's number one customer for African woods," Djombo said.
Creation of a special pan-African certification process is also the result of the desire to develop a dedicated certification system for Africa only, as distinguished from other, existing processes which do not take into account local information and conditions.
Hinrich Stoll, the director-general of La Congolaise Industrielle des Bois (CIB), a timber company headquartered in Brazzaville, strongly approves of Africa having its own certification system.
"There are already some 20 certification systems; there is one for Indonesia, Mexico, a pan-European system, etc. The African countries will have a hard time accepting a certification panel from Mexico or elsewhere in the world where they are not familiar with conditions peculiar to Africa. We need an African panel, with African experts. That means people from the private sector, NGOs, environmentalists, and government representatives," said Stoll.
Besides providing better sustainable forest management, certification will also provide African timber with better access to the world markets, and more prominent positioning.
"The trend internationally is that consumers now want everything they eat and use to come from naturally renewable resources, and not through destructive and environmentally-damaging practices. It began with food products. There is a 'green label' now for potatoes, and consumers want the same thing for their wood," Stoll explained.
"If we can meet this consumer demand, which is now constantly on the upsurge, especially in the northern European countries, it will help us gain access to the market and will allow us to be competitive and keep our place with certified products the consumer has confidence in," he added.
Stoll said that his company was severely criticised in Germany by environmentalists, who charged him with the wholesale destruction of forests in the Sangha region of the northern Republic of the Congo. In many cities throughout Germany, the use of tropical hardwoods remains illegal.
The CIB then began working with the Wildlife Conservation Society and other environmental groups to improve the management of its logging operations in Congo. According to Stoll, the company is now able to sell its wood in some German states and in France, Italy, and Spain. However, the northern European countries are still boycotting the sale of uncertified tropical hardwoods.
Worrisome reports detailing the threat to tropical forests have appeared. Though most of the forests in the Congo basin are still intact, logging, agriculture, urban sprawl and other human activity seriously threaten the resources of the tropical forests, which retain enormous importance for the health of the global ecosystem.
"Africans are willy-nilly chopping down their forests. And now that the Malaysians have decimated their own forests back home, they are coming to chop down Africa. It's time for Africa to lay down the law," states Professor Jean-Luc Mandaba, the assistant director-general of Societe Forestiere in the Central African Republic.
Pascal Makoka, the assistant director-general of a logging company in Congo, believes that certification is important so that forests can continue to be sustainably managed.
"The forests in Africa are not very well planned-out, nor are they well managed. We're still at the stage of figuring out how to best log our forests. That's why we're throwing our support behind creation of an African wood certification body," he declared.