News

The Federation of Timber Industries (FIB) in the DRC brings the VPA / FLEGT process to the local level

23.02.2018

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Federation of Timber Industries (FIB) has been setting up, since September 2017, the project entitled: « Support to strengthen the skills of non-state actors in the legislation and regulation of the sector forest « .

 

The main objective of the project, under the financing and the technical support of the EU and the FAO, is to make more comprehensible for the actors the normative and regulatory devices governing the wood supply chain in each province of the DRC.

 

After the official workshop launching the project by the Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development in the presence of the representatives of the EU and the FAO as well as the stakeholders on October 19th 2017, the project has entered its phase decisive with the deployment of field missions to collect the legal and regulatory texts governing logging in the DRC. To date, the coverage of this activity is 100%, since the 4 target provinces have been fully covered. Some legal instruments are available for consistency analysis by the project team.

 

While waiting for the work of consolidation and analysis, some observations may already be made.

 

We note in particular:

  • the weak production of technical documents at the provincial level compared to those related to the sector’s taxation and parafiscal taxation;
  • the difficulty for the new provinces to adopt comprehensive local legislation and regulations in terms of promoting acceptable policies for the sustainable management of forest resources;
  • the existence of a certain regulation that has become obsolete without abrogation to date, with the result that the texts are confused with potential readers of the provincial administration.

 

The outcome of this project will enable to refine these initial observations and make important recommendations to strengthen the VPA / FLEGT process at the local level in the DRC.

 

Les participants à l’atelier de lancement du projet