Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

material. Governments and financial institutions can help
limit the development of excess wood-processing plants and
equipment by requiring and exercising due diligence in
assessing wood supply and land availability in consideration
of wood-based and agro-industrial investments. Producer
countries have obvious priority with respect to improving
forest management and control as an approach to reducing
the opportunities available for illegal activities.
Need-based versus greed-based causes. Differentiating
between illegal activities motivated by poverty (such as fuelwood
and fodder collection needs, for example) and those
resulting from outright greed and that often involve organized
criminal activity (such as commercial logging in protected
areas) is also helpful in formulating effective and
equitable responses to address these complex problems.
Framework to combat illegal logging and other
forest crime
An effective strategy to combat illegal logging and other forest
crime combines elements of prevention, detection, and
suppression in a way that helps to achieve both short-term
gains (such as increases in forest revenue, or the apprehension
and conviction of the most flagrant violators of laws)
to maintain the momentum of the process, and longer-term
systemic changes (legal and institutional reforms and reduction
of possibilities for corrupt behavior).
Prevention. Prevention combines the promotion of good
governance in and outside the forest sector in general with
more specific actions focused directly on forest crime. Links
to broader development (poverty reduction, land use, industrial
development, rural development, institutional reform,
and the like) and forest sector policies, strategies, and programs
(such as national forest programs) are evident, as are
links to legislation in other sectors. These links require coordination
to avoid overlaps and missed opportunities.
Effective prevention of forest crime may need to address
the following issues:
Supply-demand imbalances
■ Improving the availability of legal wood (fuelwood, charcoal,
and building materials) or substitutes (kerosene,
solar energy, gas) to meet basic needs of rural and urban
populations
■ Improving the availability and reducing the cost of legal
industrial roundwood (for instance, through industrial
plantations; see note 3.3, Forest Plantations)
■
■
Ensuring that proper due diligence on the availability of
legal timber is carried out before authorizing or financing
forest industry capacity expansion (see note 5.4,
Strengthening Fiscal Systems in the Forest Sector)
Restructuring industry and downscaling excess capacity
Quality of legal and regulatory frameworks within and outside
the forest sector
■ Securing forest land tenure and access rights of the local
or indigenous communities to timber and wildlife (see
note 1.4, Property and Access Rights)
■ Ensuring recognition of the legitimate needs of different
stakeholders in forest concession agreements
■ Simplifying overly complex laws and regulations that
are not in line with the capacity of the different groups
of forest users to comply with the legal requirements
(especially for community and small-scale private forest
owners)
■ Identifying and resolving conflicting legislation and regulations
(central vs. decentralized levels, different sectors)
(see note 5.1, Decentralized Forest Management)
■ Reducing unreasonably high costs of compliance for legal
operators (by streamlining administrative procedures and
reducing processing time of contracts and permits)
■ Increasing costs of illegal operators through adjustments
in penal codes to ensure that these constitute effective
deterrents to forest crime
■ Including appropriate means to prevent crime in forest
management plans in commercial concessions (for
example, by closing roads after harvesting, employing
routine patrols, and determining what sort of tree marking
and log labeling systems are used)
Institutional structures and incentives
■ Addressing broader governance failures, such as lack of
transparency and accountability, and corruption (for
example, by reorganization of the public forest administration,
improvements in procedures for concession
award and timber sales, improvements to financial audit
systems and staff incentive systems)
■ Promoting independent forest certification schemes and
other demand-side measures related to corporate social
responsibility (for example, third-party audited systems
for verification of legal wood origin), especially in cases
where demand for timber and other forest products is
driven by export markets (see note 3.2, Forest Certification
Systems)
■ Creating positive incentives for those complying with
legal requirements, especially in situations where they
192 CHAPTER 5: IMPROVING FOREST GOVERNANCE