Thu, March 24, 2016 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM FOREST SCIENCES CENTRE. TRANSNATIONAL LEGALITY VERIFICATION INITIATIVES HELP PROMOTE DOMESTIC “GOOD (FOREST) GOVERNANCE”?
Lessons from the United States,
Indonesia, and China
In the last generation international agencies, non-governmental agencies and business interests have turned to transnational market forces in their efforts to promote domestic good (forest) governance in developing countries. This presentation seeks to understand better support for these initiatives, and their potential influences, by assessing the innovative case of transnational forest legality verification (LV) efforts that seeks to help enforce, rather than challenge, domestic forest policy commitments. What explains widespread support in developing and developed countries for forest legality verification? What are the prospects for future uptake and impacts? What strategic implications emerge for those seeking to foster legality verification? This presentation reflects on these questions by reviewing initial opposition, and then support for, LV in China, Indonesia, and the United States.
With colleagues and students, we theorize that legality verification has an evolutionary “two step” logic. The first step requires maintaining relatively modest standards so that the largest possible coalition of business, non-governmental and government agencies can coalesce around building supply chain ‘legal wood’ tracking processes. Once routinized, a second step could expand standards and governance requirements in ways that continue to reward, rather than penalize, forest firms and managers.
March 24, 2016 at 1 – 2 pm, FSC 1220
2424 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4