The paper, published by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the International Council of Forest and Paper Associations (ICFPA) emphasizes that "[i]t is essential that policy responses do not create perverse incentives by raising the costs of "legal" forest products". This would make illegal logging and illegal forests products trade even more profitable and undermine the competitiveness of forest products relative to non-wood alternative like steel, cement and plastic - alternatives that are non renewable, have a higher energy intensity and are not recyclable. Forestry companies need cost effective and flexible solutions to mange their wood purchasing and supply chain operations where they can directly address illegal logging activities.
The position paper draws on lessons learnt on best wood tracking and legality verification practices from a WBCSD and WWF pilot project in Latvia during 2004 the outputs of The Forests Dialogue on Practical Actions to Combat Illegal Logging , which took place in Hong Kong in March 2005. The Dialogue called on Governments urgently to lead efforts to address failings that severely hamper efforts to combat illegal logging: weak governance, corruption, poor law enforcement, conflict, unclear property rights and low investment in training and management of public agencies. There was a strong agreement that
- law enforcement should be substantially strengthened in both exporting and importing countries
- exporting countries should take urgent steps to enforce laws that protect forests of high value for conservation and to protect local communities from conflict created by illegal logging
- importing countries can do much more to use existing laws to prosecute those involved in the import and distribution of forest products that are illegal in origin
- exemplary prosecutions should be sought using laws to prevent money laundering, tax evasion, counterfeiting, smuggling, and false claims.
- prosecution of large offenders, leaders of criminal syndicates and financiers of forest crime should be the highest priority in this much-needed global crackdown on forest crime.
Companies and governments agreed that they each must take responsibility to ensure that the wood and paper products they purchase are legal, and that the highest priority is to ensure no wood is sourced illegally from national parks and reserves or stolen from local communities and private landowners. The Forests Dialogue is organizing a second dialogue in St Petersburg, 2-3 November 2005, as part of the ENA FLEG process.