FLEGT and Poverty Alleviation: the
Potential of VPAs
preliminary findings
Mary Hobley
West Africa Forest Governance Forum
7-8 June Accra
“commissioned by the European Forest Institute’s EU FLEGT
Facility - funded by the European Union, the Governments of
Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United
Kingdom, and EFI.”
The scope of the study
• Future focused – potential effects of VPAs on
poverty
• Draws from wider poverty and forestry literatures
• Based on secondary analysis from Ghana,
Cameroon and Republic of Congo
– processes used for stakeholder engagement
– actual content of VPAs
• Provides recommendations for building
processes to improve/mitigate poverty effects
WHAT THE LITERATURE TELLS US
Context to poverty and forests
• Globally high number of people dependent on forests
for part or all of their livelihoods
• Correlations between high poverty concentrations and
forest areas
• Forests play three roles in poverty reduction:
1. Mitigate or avoid poverty (safety nets)
2. Low income gap fillers (limited other employment
opportunities); and
3. Occasionally a pathway out of poverty
• Poverty reduction through forests - complicated,
indirect, and socially and geographically different
VPA effects similarly complicated
Direct and indirect effects
• Forest livelihood dependence – direct effects of
change in access to forest products – timber,
NTFPs, imposition of formal and informal
payments
• Access to employment – daily, seasonal and longterm
• Changes in ecosystem services through changes
in forest management/landuse
• Redistribution of forest revenues to poverty
reducing programmes
Conditions for poverty-reduction
• Secure local property rights & ability to use rights
as collateral
• Local decision-making power over use of forests
(respects different social/economic needs for
forests)
• Access and control over benefits and decisionmaking authority over allocation of benefits
(financial and products)
• Financial, legal and policy support from state
(including across land-uses – agriculture and
other natural resource extractive industries)
Conditions for poverty-reduction
• Strong systems of monitoring and
enforcement
• Fair access to justice and grievance
mechanisms
• Capable civil society – engage, influence,
check and hold to account policy-makers and
decision-takers at all levels
POVERTY FOCUS IN VPAs TO DATE
How much have the VPAs achieved?
• Limited in their poverty effects to date
• A legally-binding trade agreement – starting
point timber legality not poverty reduction
• Enforcement of timber legality often immediate
negative effects on poor people’s livelihoods
• VPA focus on timber legality does not directly
address other drivers of forest change –
agriculture/mining, greater effects on poverty
and livelihoods
UNDERSTANDING POVERTY AND
VPAs
Understanding poverty
• DAC/OECD (2001) multidimensional poverty focusing on a range of capabilities – economic,
human, political, socio-cultural and protective
(reducing vulnerability)
• Three important elements for poverty reduction:
1. Secure access to livelihood assets
2. Human agency – capability to have a voice and
influence decisions in appropriate forums
3. Changes to the rules of the game (laws, policies,
decision-making processes) to support poor
people’s livelihoods
VPA process – how it makes space for
poverty reduction
Rules of the
game
Negotiating space +
form of
representation
Securing livelihood
assets & services
Building informed
capable voice
Putting theory into practice
• Four elements for poverty reduction- a
framework for understanding poverty impacts
• Basis for impact assessment system
• Basis for design of process and content to
enhance poverty reduction effects or
mitigatory actions
• Four elements provide basis for a social
safeguards system
BUILDING SOCIAL SAFEGUARDS
Building social safeguards
Two roles:
1.
2.
Preventative – ensuring negative impact does not occur (through
better understanding Article 17)
Reactive – mitigating actions when negative effects happen
(monitoring Article 17)
Two forms
1. Soft or process safeguards
2. Hard safeguards (legally enforceable)
Social safeguard system
Need to build sufficient understanding prior to intervention
to either prevent or react and
to build both process and content safeguards
Necessary elements of a social
safeguard system (Article 17)
• Prevention – ex-ante poverty impact assessment
• Mitigation – monitoring/feedback
• Consultation & information – multi-level
stakeholder engagement
• Monitoring – outline of system in annex
• Grievance mechanisms –Joint Monitoring
mechanism first step – may require ‘ombudsman’
type mechanism as intermediary
OPERATIONALISING SYSTEMS FOR
POVERTY REDUCTION IN VPAs
The VPA process
Preparation
Negotiation
Element 1
Building
understanding:
Ex-ante PIA
Monitoring
Element 4
Securing livelihoods
and reducing
vulnerability
Transitional
Implementation
Element 2
Building informed,
accountable,
representative voice
Element 3
Changing the rules of
the game
Full
Implementation
Preparation
•Ex-ante poverty
impact assessment
(PIA) to identify
preventative
measures
•Establish different
stakeholder
interests
•Deepen & broaden
civil society
representation
•Regulatory impact
assessment – to
identify areas
affecting poor
people’s livelihoods
Negotiation
•Strengthen
stakeholder
representation &
capability (multilevel feedback
mechanisms)
•Systematically
review legislation
(using ex-ante PIA)
•Identify alternative
livelihoods –
remove barriers to
artisanal
operations/market
barriers
•Improve legal
framework for
revenue/tax
regimes
Transitional
Implementation
•Build monitoring
systems to track
poverty effects
•Ensure civil society
representation in
legal reform
discussions
(particularly
representation of
poor people’s
interests)
•Clarify forest/land
tenure allocation
processes
•Grievance
mechanisms for
forest dependent
people
Full
Implementation
Develop parallel
programmes for :
•civil society
capacity
at multiple levels
•Improve revenue
tracking and local
decision-making for
resource allocation,
including
accountability
mechanisms
•Support small-scale
business
development
•Alternative
livelihood
programme where
major domestic
restructuring
Conclusions
• Four key elements for enhanced poverty
reduction in place in VPA
• Weak poverty understanding built into
preparation processes so far
• Need for systematic attention to poverty effects
from preparation to negotiation to
implementation
• Monitoring systems based on ex-ante PIA and
tracking change in four elements – livelihood
assets, voice, rules of game, and provision of
representative and effective fora for negotiation
and accountability
Conclusions
• Parallel programmes for support to civil society,
revenue tracking systems and focus on
governance of forest rents, domestic market
restructuring
• Limits to what VPA can achieve on poverty
outcomes – can prevent and mitigate based on
good use of knowledge
• FLEGT approaches to be extended across landuse systems – agriculture and other natural
resource extractive industries
Our Challenge
We have systems that can identify timber as
‘legal, responsible and even sustainable but
no-one has yet developed systems to verify
poverty-reducing forestry’
James Mayers IIED