
Demand-side measures to reduce illegal timber trade
Lessons learned from the EU FLEGT Action Plan and ways forward
Synopsis
Demand-side measures to reduce trade in illegal timber have been implemented by private sector and public sector actors in major consumer markets. Measures include private sector voluntary codes of practice, trade association codes, public procurement policies and legal requirements.
Participants in this seminar will explore demand-side measures, share implementation experiences, reflect on the limitations of some measures and consider the benefits of combining different measures and related tools.
Objectives
- Participants learn about market policies and regulations, demand-side measures and implementation tools.
- Participants learn lessons from a broad variety of procurement agents and market regulators and share implementation experiences.
- Participants explore ways forward to better use demand-side measures to achieve the goals of the Action Plan.
Who is in it?
Jie Chen, State Forestry Administration
Chen focuses on forest product trading and investment, especially forest certification and timber legality. She has contributed to the development of China's Timber Legality Verification Scheme and Standard and the Chinese Due Diligence System, providing her expertise in international and national forestry policy and her insight into China's timber manufacturing sector.
Emily Unwin, Client Earth

Unwin is a lawyer with ClientEarth, an EU based, public-interest environmental law organisation. She leads ClientEarth's work on addressing the drivers of deforestation, which focuses on supporting the improved design and operation of relevant EU laws. Working in the EU and internationally, over the last three years Unwin has had a particular focus on the implementation and operation of the EU Timber Regulation in the EU, and on communicating its implications and the opportunities it creates for government, industry and civil society internationally. This work also aims to support legal reform in forest governance, and in particular the role of civil society in that reform, especially in the context of Voluntary Partnership Agreements. She has previously worked as a commercial, corporate and regulatory lawyer and she holds degrees in Geography, Law and International Environmental Law.
Thorsten Hinrichs, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food
Hinrichs is a forester working at Germany's Federal Ministry for Agriculture and Food since 1997. He has been responsible for different topics, from forest reproductive material to rural development. Since 2010 he has been working at the European and International Forest Policy division. He is in charge of the EU Forest Policy and one of his main tasks is the national implementation of the FLEGT Regulation and the EU Timber Regulation.
Laura Furones, EU FLEGT Facility

Robert Busink, Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs
Meriam Wortel, Netherlands Food and Consumer product safety authority
Christian Sloth, NepCon
Jane Feehan, European Investment Bank
Feehan is a forest sector and natural resource management specialist who works on the European Investment Bank's portfolio of investments in the forestry and agriculture sectors. Throughout her work she has an interest in sustainable land use and the challenge of meeting future primary resource needs in an increasingly resource-constrained world, and in the cross-sectoral task of understanding and meeting the investment needs that arise from this. Prior to joining the Bank Jane worked with the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen, where she specialised on impacts of climate change on biodiversity; agri-environmental policy design; and policy effectiveness analysis. She has also worked with the Irish Environmental Protection Agency and the European Commission (DG ENV).
Kate Horner, EIA
Kate Horner is the Director of Forest Campaigns for the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) US in Washington, DC. She oversees a team that together conducts investigations of illegal timber trade, supports local partners' capacity strengthening and advocates for enactment and implementation of demand side measures. Previously, she was the Trade and Forest Policy Analyst at Friends of the Earth US, where she served as an expert at multiple United Nations and World Bank meetings and as an advisor to several developing country governments. She also served on the Citizen Trade Campaign's Executive Committee, guiding national trade policy advocacy strategies. She has authored several policy papers related to forest and climate policy as well as on the negative impacts of trade and investment agreements. She has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian and The New York Times. She also has experience as a political campaign manager, community organizer, researcher and editor.
Rupert Oliver, ITTO

Background materials
Relevant information on timber procurement available on the illegal logging portal
Briefing: Reducing ‘forest footprints': tackling demand for forest-risk commodities. IIED, 2013.
