On August 28, the Center for Rural Development in Central Vietnam (CRD) hosted a consultation workshop to obtain comments and perspectives on the draft Decree of Vietnam’s Timber Legality Assurance System at 09 Ngo Quyen street (Hue city).

The whole workshop

More than forty participants are representatives of Vietnam Administration of Forestry (VNFOREST), Thua Thien Hue Department of Agriculture and Rural Development leaders, and representatives from New Zealand Embassy, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Vietnam, provincial and district government agencies, business associations, timber enterprises, NGOs and civil society organizations, and universities in the provinces of Nghe An, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, Thua Thien Hue, and Quang Nam, and Da Nang city.

At the workshop, Ms. Nguyen Tuong Van, Department of Science, Technology and International Cooperation, VNFOREST had a talk on summary of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (VPA-FLEGT).

Participants were then divided into three groups: the state management agencies, businesses and civil society organizations to discuss about some points of the draft Decree.

The workshop created an open space for participants to express their concerns about the “gaps” in timber trade, considering limits of classification of timber exporters as well as proposing measures to strengthen supervision, evaluation, and inspection, and complaint mechanism to ensure the openness and transparency.

Based on the results of this consultation workshop, the CRD has gathered all the detailed comments to each clause and contents agreed in the workshop, and documented into the Summary of comments on the draft Decree from stakeholders in the Central provinces sent to the VNFOREST.