Secretary General
Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife
Cameroon

 Evolution of private certification in Cameroon
 What about private certifications
 Measures taken for Certificate of Legality
 Process followed for Private Certification schemes recognition
 Case study in Cameroon
 Output of the process until now
 Chain of custody constraints
 Next steps
 Conclusions of the study

Cameroon production forest area: 8,4 Millions
Ha
Without
Management
Plan
With
Management
Plan

12
31
Sustainable
Mgt certified
FSC
956.000 ha FSC (OLB)
14
TLTV by SGS
1.102.000 ha TLTV
Certified
Legality in 2012 about 54 % of the area of
FMU with MP are under private certification
45
13 OLB by Bureau Veritas
900.000 ha OLB only
3 FSC-CW
Managed plan
1 VLC by Smartwood-Rainforest
FMU

 12 Forest Management Unit are sustainable management (FSC)
 31 Forest Management Unit are certified legality (14
TLTV from SGS, 13 OLB from Bureau Veritas, 3 FSC-
CW, et 1 VLC from Smarthwood-Rainforest)
 Certification operators are accredited by FSC for sustainable management; they develop their own legality standards
 3 titles out of 8 are not covered by private certification
 Council Forest standard exist with FSC but no certificate has been yet delivered

According to the Legality Assurance System
 Certification bodies have to be approved for each standard they used
 Entities holding a recognized private certificate could use it for their request of certificate of legality
 Recognized private certification is not equivalent to
Certificate of Legality and of course not to FLEGT Export
License
 Not all of Private Certificate are eligible (Example: Chain of
Custody’s Certificate is not eligible)

Arrêté 0004/MINFOF Febr 7 th 2013
• List of documents to be provided to comply with VPA legality matrix (art 10)
• The operators owning a recognized private certification for their titles could get a Certificate of Legality if an authentified copy of their valid private certificate from an recognized certification body is provided (art 15)
• All operators have to provide the Cameroonian official
Forest Information System SIGIF with the required documents (art 12 & 13)
Minfof internal procedures to analyse all demand of
Certificate of Legality

 Definition and validation of the evaluation methodology
 Analysis process by a Consultant :


Identification of existing private certification schemes
Request from certification bodies operating in
Cameroon their local used certification schemes standard and audit methodology


Assessment of certification schemes standard
Assessment of certification bodies audit methodology
 3 restitutions of the consultant findings during the process involving private sector and advisors
 Validation workshop




Some private certificate are issued even if all criteria are not
100% verified
Some private certificate are issued with a multiannual validity period
Some private certificate are issued for a group of forest entities meaning that all of them may not be fully audited. Some time, the certificate does not show clearly wish entities of the group is certified.
 Even if some private certification standards are supposed to be legally above criteria, the certification bodies and the procedures used need to be recognized.







List of private certified entities/titles
List of checkers that are not always fulfilled when issuing a private certificate
List of certificates that should be considered for analysis
Evaluation grid for certification scheme standard compliance verification
Evaluation grid for audit methodology/process compliance verification
Procedure proposal to implement the verification
 Cameroon did not yet analyse all certification schemes but prepared the official process in a participative way
 The certification bodies have to submit their request with the scheme standard and procedures they use

 Temporary procedures are in place to allow the
Minister in charge of Forest to issue Certificates of
Legality if all required document and verifications has be done (Art 16 from Arrêté 0004/MINFOF Febr 7th
2013)
 The issuing of FLEGT License is not effective until the
Chain of custody, linked to the SIGIF, is operational

 All requests of Certificate of Legality are analysed by a CNS
(National Monitoring Committee) once a year after technical analysis in MINFOF and decision is validated by the CCS (Joint Monitoring Committee)
 Cameroon recognised private legality/durability certification schemes will be published yearly by the
Ministry with the evaluation grid
 In the mean time, all operator (holding private certificate or not) could address their demand for Certificate of
Legality to the Minister
 The MINFOF will recognize, after checking, their compliance with its indicators of the verification of legality.
 It should help the operator to provide evidence to their client in Europe that have to deal with Due diligence.

 MINFOF consultant recommends to be really cautious when issuing Certificate of Legality to entities holding private certificates because of all the difference identified
 The evaluation grids with all VPA criteria and the question the evaluator should ask himself have to be carefully used by the operator and by the service in charge of controlling before advising the CNS and CCS to issue a legality certificate