Lower Mekong countries set their priorities on sustainable forest trade

16/07/2021

Already a hotspot for tropical forests and biodiversity, in recent decades the Lower Mekong Region (LMR) has also become a hotspot for deforestation. Between 1990-2015, the region lost about 4.7 million hectares of forest, as a result of logging, mining, and expansion of unsustainable agriculture and infrastructure. Countries have faced challenges incentivising sustainable wood supply chains and effective forest governance, while the increasing international demand for wood products and regional trade has only fueled illegal forest exploitation.

Since March 2020, the UN-REDD Programme’s Sustainable Forest Trade in the Lower Mekong Region (SFT-LMR) initiative has been working with national governments and regional and local partners across five countries in the region to fight the trade of illegal forest products and develop systems that ensure legal, sustainable timber trade.

Identifying methods to boost legal, sustainable trade in forest products and strengthening cooperation among Lower Mekong countries have been key priorities of the inception phase of SFT-LMR. To date, UN-REDD has organised national consultations in Lao PDR, Thailand, Viet Nam, and Myanmar, as well as a regional dialogue for country delegations and partner organizations:

Discussions revolved around timber trade and illegal logging trends in the region, forest certification the role of the financial sector in promoting sustainable forest trade and on recent developments in forest and land-use monitoring. Further, the events promoted information sharing, use of law enforcement in supporting sustainable forest trade policies and additional opportunities to improve data use and accessibility.

Key priorities identified during these consultations include, implementing communication campaigns; establishing regional protocols on confiscated timber, cross-border fires, etc.; identifying gaps in national forest and trade datasets; engaging smallholders in the forestry and trade sectors; conducting real-time forest monitoring; assessing community-based forest management and more.

With the inception phase completed, the project is now focusing on delivering several ambitious outputs by the end of 2021, including a prototype for near-real time monitoring, and national communications strategies to raise awareness about illegal logging.

Learn more about the SFT-LMR initiative at: https://www.un-redd.org/lower-mekong