The FLEGT-VPA: Cameroon's laws clash with an inflexible European Union.

• Date de Publication : 2024-10-12

The European Union (EU) will, unilaterally, turn its back on the FLEGT-VPA. Entering into force on December 1, 2011, this unique trade agreement was supposed to promote the timber trade between Cameroon and the European Union in accordance with Cameroonian laws.

The context in which the FLEGT-VPA was signed in 2011 is rather surprising. At the same time, Cameroon was negotiating the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU). It is an atypical parallel trade agreement that deviates from the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and allows the EU to take unilateral retaliatory measures. This agreement thus carried the seeds of its own demise. How can one understand that a text steeped in the principles of legality verification conflicts with the provisions outlined by the laws?

Over the 13 years of the VPA’s existence, Cameroon was supposed to simultaneously receive support for the adjustment of its regulatory framework, which did not align with the European Union’s preferences, even though this was not an existential parameter of the agreement. The point of contention was found: the exclusion of small titles; sales of cutting permits, wood removal and recovery authorizations (ARB/AEB) from the scope of the agreement because they did not guarantee sustainable forest management according to the European partner.

The constant reminders from the Cameroonian side yielded no results. On the contrary, they deepened the rift. In the end, the European Union in its requiem for the agreement stated: "The reform of the legal framework has not been completed, and forest exploitation is still partly based on small exploitation titles (cutting sales) that do not require any management plan." The reference to regulations recognizing these forms of exploitation, the sectoral advances in the digitization of procedures, and the significantly evolving statistics due to reforms changed nothing. This is the understanding of all the specific procedures related to forest exploitation in Cameroon.

The fixation on forest exploitation overshadows the fact that this activity simply relates to the extraction of commercial species. However, the statistics provide insights. In 2019, the Forest Cover Monitoring Unit of the Ministry of Forests and Wildlife, in collaboration with the WRI (World Resources Institute), published the annual report on major deforestation events. The GLAD (Global Land Analysis and Discovery) alerts recorded from a study conducted on 3,628.61 hectares revealed that the following human activities are the causes of deforestation: agriculture in all its forms (59.99%), logging (34.55%), mining (5.11%), and development projects (0.45%).

Hervé Andang, Special Correspondent