Examples of Forest Certification Government Support
Perú
Peruvian forest law supports forest certification by reducing the payment of annual forest harvesting rights for companies with a forest concession by thirty percent. The same discount is applied to taxes that the state collects from the volume of timber harvested in the case of indigenous forest lands. Among other benefits, the Forest authority carries out a five-year audit.
Belgium
The Flemish Regional Government (Belgium) has given grants ranging from 47.500 to 130.000 Euro for short term (1-3 year) projects to support local communities in South America. The grants will help the communities organise themselves to achieve group certification of their forests and coordinate access to markets for certified wood and wood products (nuts and woodcarving, for instance). One project is specifically targeted to restore degraded forests. The government in all cases works through domestic, often local, NGOs.
Vietnam/Finland
The Forest Sector Development in Vietnam is a six-year project co-sponsored by the governments of Vietnam, Finland, Netherlands and the World Bank. Focused on family forest owners, it includes a component that promotes forest certification by setting up Village Funds in order to finance consulting services to carry out certification pre-assessment and assessment, as well as periodic surveillance audits, training for local staff in auditing of certification standards, market promotion of the certified products for export, and development and maintenance of a databank of certified forests.
Netherlands
Netherlands finances the Initiative for Sustainable Trade (Initiatief Duurzame Handel, IDH), which aim is to increase the supply of products that public authorities are looking for as part of the national green public procurement policy. One of the areas IDH invests in is forest certification in the tropical areas. For that purpose it is supporting the Borneo Initiative, the Amazon Initiative and the Congo Basin Initiative.
The Borneo Initiative, concentrated on Kalimantan, but reaching out to other parts of Indonesia, has already triggered 2,3 million ha FSC certification, and plans for another 9 million ha. in coming years. It works with a 2$/ha start-up subsidy program, which covers part of the total costs (ca. 25%) a concessionaire will have to make. The 2$/ha contribution is provided in the form of services and training by third party auditors and pre-selected consultants on high conservation values, environmental studies, social studies, stakeholder consultations – all necessary building blocks to obtain the FSC certificate. It also works on expanding the market for certified tropical timber, and not only to the Netherlands. It focuses also on Germany, UK, Denmark, Belgium and France, and, from 2012, the USA.
Other governments
European Governments, including UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, have green public procurement policies where they encourage authorities to buy certified products.
