FLEGT – it’s one of the clunkiest acronyms ever. To recap, it stands for the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade programme. Doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, does it? And to be honest it hasn’t exactly become a feature of day-to-day conversation in the timber trade. That’s not just because of the clunky acronym, but also because it’s been an extremely slow burn.
The programme was devised to combat illegal logging and illegal timber trading. It’s an EU initiative launched when the UK was still part of the EU. In fact, the UK was one of its principal architects and evangelists. The deal was that timber supplier countries, all tropical, signed up to an EU FLEGT Voluntary Partnership Agreement (FLEGT VPA) and undertook to establish a Timber Legality Assurance System to ensure that timber was harvested in compliance with the countries’ laws. Legality may not be the same as sustainability, but it is seen as a key stepping stone towards it. That includes by the leading forestry and timber sustainability certification schemes the FSC and PEFC. Moreover, measures undertaken by some partner supplier countries in association with their FLEGT efforts matched sustainability certification scheme criteria.
Once countries have got their Timber Legality Assurance System in place and it is vetted and approved by the EU and supplier country government, their exports can be FLEGT licensed. This then exempts them from further due diligence in terms of legality assurance in EU countries. That simplifies the job of importers and effectively gives the supplier country easier access to markets. The idea is that this further incentivises legal forestry and timber production back at base.
The snag is, in FLEGT’s 20-plus years, just one country, Indonesia, had until recently got to the licensing stage. Small surprise the scheme hasn’t exactly made waves in the EU and UK markets, and you don’t get customers asking for some FLEGT-licensed timber please.
Brexit added another layer of complication to the whole set up for the UK market. While the government continued to back the FLEGT initiative, it wouldn’t let FLEGT-licensed timber into the country without further legality due diligence on the part of importers unless the supplier country signed up to a bilateral Voluntary Partnership Agreement with the UK. Indonesia duly did this. So Indonesian FLEGT-licensed timber is exempt further due diligence under the anti-illegal timber UK Timber Regulation. Smiles and handshakes all round.
Then last August a new flame flickered in the FLEGT slow burn. Finally, a second country, Ghana, passed the test and its timber trade was authorised by the Ghanaian and EU governments to issue FLEGT Licences. That provides Ghanaian timber proof of legality under the EU Deforestation Regulation (that’s a new regulation and another rabbit hole down which I won’t dive into right now as my blog word count is strictly limited).
But, and it’s a big but for Ghana, the UK, having been a key supporter not just of FLEGT but of Ghana’s progress through the whole process, is still not granting Ghanaian licensed timber exemption from due diligence under the UK Timber Regulation. That’s due to the lack of a bilateral Voluntary Partnership Agreement between the two countries, with the UK government so far only making the woolliest of noises on its intention to sign one.
In December, the UK and Ghana signed a memorandum of understanding focused on ‘deepening collaboration on forest legality, climate resilience, and responsible forest management’. But asked by yours truly about giving Ghanaian Flegt licensed timber due diligence exemption under the UK Timber Regulation, the Department for the Environment responded with this round-the-houses answer: “We are proud of our long-standing partnership with Ghana towards legal, transparent, and resilient timber trade underpinned by strong forest governance. In December 2025, the UK and Ghana re-affirmed their commitment to the next phase of this partnership. We are reviewing our approach to tackling deforestation linked to trade and will set out our approach to this including future Voluntary Partnership Agreements at the earliest opportunity.”
I don’t think that’s good enough. Get the Agreement done and reward Ghana for its significant efforts to protect its forests and promote a sustainable timber industry. It’s taken time, but it has made major strides in improving the environmental performance of its timber sector. As part of the FLEGT deal, it has also promoted ‘stakeholder engagement’ in the industry – civil servant and NGO speak for getting ordinary people involved in forestry and timber sector policy making. It’s also applied its Timber Legality Assurance System to its domestic timber market, cutting off a possible sales channel for illegal timber. In conjunction, it’s stepped up policing to combat illegal logging and timber smuggling.
Having backed Ghana all through its FLEGT progress, the UK is now ‘shilly shallying’ over giving it the reward it was promised for its hard graft. It doesn’t give much encouragement to other timber supplier countries engaged in the FLEGT programme.