THE 6TH CORE GROUP MEETING AND SIGNIFICANT COMMENTS ON THE VNTLAS DRAFT

On July 6th 2019, VNForest organized a workshop to discuss the draft Decree No2 of the VNTLAS in Da Nang City. Workshop were co-chaired by Dr. Pham Van Dien, Deputy Director General VNFOREST and Mr. Ngo Si Hoai, Vice Chair of Vietnam Timber and Forest Product Association (VIFORES). Participants were multi-stakeholders of the VPA core group, including several departments of VNForest, e.g CITES Office, Department of Legal, Department of S&T and International Cooperation, national and provincial timber associations, academia and CSOs. The workshop purpose is to obtain comments and perspectives from different stakeholders on the draft Decree No2 of the VNTLAS.
Comments were from most participants and VNGO-FLEGT’s representatives (SRD, CRD, ISFM, CED). All strongly said that the draft Decree should be supplemented and modified to reflect the following points:

• Scope of the Decree should cover all components of the timber supply chain (from production to trade)
• Objects of the Decree are individuals and organizations who are involved in all components of the supply chain, not only export and import
• The Decree should also cover timber trade in domestic market.
• The FLEGT licensing agency should not be the same CITES licensing agency as it is not relevant.
• MARD take lead both tasks of developing the FLEGT licensing system and an independent evaluation, which affect the credibility of the system. The independent evaluation should be appointed by the Core group with concrete criteria
• The M&E part is too vague and only in 1 page format of the annex (table 12).
• Role of CSOs in M&E is not mentioned at all.
• Monitoring the development and implementation of FLEGT licensing system should be detailed in the Decree.
• The relationship between VNTLAS and other forest certification schemes such as SFM, FSC, PEFC, etc should be addressed in this Decree.

In the case that a comprehensive Decree for the whole VNTLAS cannot be developed, we recommend to change the name of the Decree as "Decree on VNTLAS for VPA FLEGT implementation" only.

                                                                                          Representatives participated in the meeting

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