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L’observation indépendante des forêts (OIF) a joué un rôle important dans l’amélioration de la gouvernance forestière et dans la lutte contre l’exploitation forestière illégale au cours des 20 dernières années, en conduisant, par exemple, à l’annulation de titres forestiers illégaux et l’adoption de nouveaux arrêtés ministériels améliorant la gouvernance forestière.

In some tropical countries, illegal logging accounts for the majority of forest clearing, threatening economies, livelihoods, ecosystems and contributing to climate change. To combat illegal logging and close markets to illegally sourced timber, tropical timber-producing countries around the world are developing national timber tracking systems.

Independent forest monitoring (IFM) has played an important role in improving forest governance and tackling illegal logging in the past 20 years, for example by leading to the withdrawal of illegal forest titles and adoption of new ministerial orders improving forest governance.

The European Union is one of the largest importers of commodities linked to deforestation, with more than 60% of the world’s cocoa and about 50% of coffee going to Europe alone in 2016. These are two of seven agricultural commodities that resulted in over a quarter of global tree cover loss from 2001 to 2015.

In April 2021, the World Resources Institute’s Open Timber Portal (OTP) launched its first transparency rankings of forestry producers in Gabon, aimed at incentivising companies to disclose evidence that they are operating in compliance with forest management legislation.

A recent study by Chinese and international experts argues that China’s leaders are recognizing the importance of greening the country’s commodity value chains. As China reassesses the vulnerability and risks of its global value chains due to the COVID-19 pandemic and considers how to build back its economy with greater resilience and sustainability, the political moment is right to make this shift.

The overall objective of this contract is to assist the WFID Advisory Board in the establishment of a 501(c)(3) WFID entity, suggestions for the most appropriate business model (e.g. WFID staffing and governance structures) that will be needed to successfully scale WFID program activities through fundraising and partnership building.

By his own admission in a 2015 criminal plea agreement, Washington state sawmill owner Harold Clause Kupers suspected he had been buying logs illegally harvested from Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Besides his confession, DNA from the illegal timber—not from Kupers—implicated him in the crime.

In 2018, China wrote the concepts of "ecological civilization" and "a community of shared future for mankind" into its Constitution. The new concepts signal China's prioritization of the environment in its policy agenda and willingness to engage cooperatively in global affairs.