Indonesia’s Sustainable Timber Trade Policy Promotes Climate Change Mitigation by Branindityo Nugroho This session took place in Indonesia Pavilion, 15 november 2016. It is quite remarkable as today is the first day of FLEGT being officially used as wood certification. Indonesia marked as the first country to establish this certification cooperation with European Union (EU). And by the time this session is being held, there were already 94 licenses issued, which covering 3 million ton of wood equals 450 million USD! So what is certification? How could it related to Climate Change? As we may know, deforestation and forest degradation gives this planet painful carbons. Illegal wood and illegal timber trading is one of the most influencing factor in deforestation and forest degradation. Carbon emitted from forest degradation and deforestation cost 17-20% annual global emission. We’ll take a closer look from Indonesia. From total CO2 emitted, 47% of indonesia CO2 emission comes from deforestation and forest degradation. In Indonesia, there’s a timber certification at national scope named SVLK (Sistem Verifikasi Legal Kayu). SVLK is a system that ensures that all timber harvested, transported, manufactured, and traded from Indonesia, comes from legal sources, and in full compliance with the indonesia laws. The certification scope started from the forest resources, then to forest management and planning, then to harvesting and transporting (upstream), then to industry, then to the export process (downstream) Mr Budi Hermawan, member Kayu Lapis Group (plywood company) added, the company has 1 million total forest area in Indonesia. Mainly produces plywood, furnitures, wood flooring, and glue. Total 80% of the products being exported. One of the biggest market is to EU countries. FLEGT is a certification scheme that agreed and accredited between EU countries and Timber-exporting countries. The certification scope includes traceability, safety working environment, waste management, etc. [gallery ids="649,650,651" type="columns"] Certification is SO important. it is a tool to align economical and ecological benefit and security. the main point of certification is transparancy. it is to ensure that the wood we are selling is an exact wood harvested from the legal area. So as long this positive scheme is used properly, then the more you are using timber products, the more ecological benefit being earned. Now that’s a win-win.]]>