For the last three years, we have been working to support the legal timber trade in Vietnam, together with our partner SFMI, a Vietnamese NGO working on forest science and related topics.
If Vietnamese companies can demonstrate that the timber they use complies with local laws, they will have a competitive advantage in exporting their goods to Europe. That advantage comes as a result of two policies.
First, the EU Timber Regulation requires European companies to demonstrate that the timber they import into the EU (European Union) market complies with all laws in its country of harvest. That means that Vietnamese companies that can demonstrate legality will find it substantially easier to find buyers in Europe.
Second, Vietnam has recently completed negotiations with the EU on a ‘Voluntary Partnership Agreement’ – a trade agreement between the EU and Vietnam that once brought into force will mean that Vietnamese companies will have to demonstrate that their timber is legal for all exports to the EU market.
The project is co-funded by the EU and NEPCon. It was launched in March 2014 and will end in February 2017. During the project, we have:
- developed a toolkit to help Vietnamese companies comply with relevant requirements and communicated this with European buyers. The toolkit contains 18 tools, including guidance documents, checklists, and templates that are ready for use. We are making all the tools freely available to all Vietnamese companies.
- trained Vietnamese companies and organisations on how to use our toolkit. We have conducted five training courses for more than 40 organisations. They in turn trained over 150 small and medium sized companies (SMEs). The toolkit has been used by other local NGOs for training courses they have run.
- developed National Forestry Risk Profiles for Vietnam and the five other main countries that Vietnam imports timber from. The Risk Profiles will help Vietnamese timber companies assess legality risks when importing timber from these countries, which will help them be able to sell their products to Europe.
- conducted a survey to gauge the level of awareness and understanding of European timber legality requirements among SMEs and the organisations that work with them.
- conducted assessments of the readiness of 20 Vietnamese SMEs to meet EU legality requirements.
We held a final project workshop in Ho Chi Minh City on 30 November 2016 which was attended by companies in the timber sector, representatives from the government, the EU Delegation, NGOs, trade associations and the media.
At the event, participants discussed how to use the tools listed above and timber legality in general. Some of the project’s participants shared their experience involving in the project as trainees and later being organisers of training for SMEs on timber legality. These include people from Dong Nai Wood Industry Association and Vietnam Rubber Group.
We have made all the tools listed above and the key presentations from the workshop freely accessible at flegt-tools.org/toolkit-and-training-centre/.
The project “Increasing capacity of civil society organisations (CSOs) and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to implement FLEGT requirements” is co-funded by the European Union and NEPCon, and implemented by NEPCon and SFMI.