In this edition of the newsletter, we will share a new improvement that we have recently made on the portal, which now allows users to visualize and access observations from independent forest monitors directly on a map. You will also hear about the last independent forest monitoring missions conducted by Brainforest in response to alleged illegal activities in the Moyen-Ogooué and Ngounié provinces of Gabon.
The European Union’s Regulation on deforestation-free products (EUDR), which aims to prevent products and commodities linked to deforestation and forest degradation from being sold in the EU, came into force in June 2023. The EUDR was one of the most widely discussed topics at the 2023 Land &Carbon Lab Summit, where the OTP was also featured as a key transparency tool to share geospatial and contextual information with importers, law enforcement, and competent authorities.
Last month, the OTP team was in Yaoundé to participate in a three-day workshop with CED, FLAG and FODER, in order to coordinate efforts and define priority sites for the next independent forest monitoring missions under the OTP-IM CAM project. In this edition of the newsletter, you will also discover two new functionalities that we have released, including notifying users of expiring and expired documents.
In this edition of the newsletter, we will be sharing some updates on the activities that we have been carrying out on the ground, with the support of our partners. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, you will hear about a training that was organized for inspectors from the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development in late January as well as a joint mission with provincial inspectors that was conducted in the Luki Biosphere Reserve last year.
Following a trialogue that lasted several weeks, representatives from the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Council agreed on the new regulation on deforestation-free products in the night of December 5-6. In parallel, we have finalized the update of the tree cover loss data on the Open Timber Portal (OTP), which will allow users to anticipate the implementation of this regulation. The OTP now also features all of the Global Forest Watch tree cover loss data between 2001 and 2021.
Next week, WRI’s Forest Legality Initiative is hosting its annual Forest Legality Week. This year’s conference will be held as a hybrid event and will focus on a range of topics, including an update on timber legality regulations, changes to international cooperation on forest governance, an update on early warning systems for deforestation, policy responses to deforestation in commodity supply chains, timber traceability systems, and a regional focus on the Amazon.
We are excited to share that we have released a new publication, co-authored with Forest Legality Advisory Group (FLAG) and Resource Extraction Monitoring (REM) that evaluates the achievements of independent forest monitoring in the Congo Basin over the last 20 years. In this edition of the newsletter, you will also learn about the 2021 tree cover loss data that was released in April and some of the insights shared by Global Forest Watch based on this new data.
As we embark on new projects, funded by the European Union, the United States and Norway, we would like to take the time to better understand how you use the OTP. This is why we are requesting your input, which will help to inform the next development phases of the platform. In this newsletter edition, you also will find the recordings of the English and French sessions on the use of the OTP in due diligence that were organized in November in partnership with OBBOIS, the International Tropical Timber Technical Association (ATIBT) and the UK Timber Trade Federation (UKTTF).
The timber sector has been a pioneer in traceability and transparency for many years. We will keep supporting the sector moving towards greater transparency and accountability through our three new projects that are starting in the Congo Basin, funded by the European Union, the Norwegian government and the U.S State of Department Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. To start with, we invite you to join the trainings we are organizing for importers and competent authorities based in the EU and UK on how to use OTP data to perform due diligence on November 17th and 19th.
In this edition, you will learn more about two new features we released recently, as we keep working on upgrading the OTP user experience. You will hear about our progress in Gabon, where we recently organized an information and knowledge-sharing workshop, and you will find invitations to register for several exciting upcoming events. I would like to draw your attention in particular to the upcoming Forest Legality Week, which WRI will host from June 21-25, with generous support and cooperation from the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic largely disrupted the work of our partners from the civil society and the private sector on the ground last year, we did see an important increase in the number of visitors to the platform from March to December 2020. This surge highlights that the OTP has been an important tool for users to remotely access key information on management practices and compliance with timber legality requirements throughout 2020.
For the past two years, the Open Timber Portal has provided key information that has improved transparency in the Congo Basin forests. This special edition of the OTP newsletter explores the connection between COVID-19 and our community of users in the Congo Basin and throughout the world. We reached out to exporters, independent monitors, and importers that use the OTP to better understand how they are operating during this emergency.
2019 was an exciting year for the Open Timber Portal. At Forest Legality Week, we presented the OTP to a packed room of the world’s forest legality experts. There, we heard from an independent monitoring organization in the Democratic Republic of the Congo whose reports, hosted on the OTP, provide critical information to buyers and from a guitar manufacturer in the United States who relies on the platform to source wood legally.
As the number of OTP users continues to grow we want to thank all of those who have visited the site. To better support our users, we have developed several resources for different user groups. These include two tutorials: one for logging companies and one for independent monitors. Both are available in French and English. Our hope is that these tutorials will help companies and Independent Monitors (IMs) as they continue to upload data to the OTP.
After several months of preparatory work with our local partner FLAG, data on Cameroon is now live on the OTP! Cameroon is the third country to be added to the portal, after Congo and the DRC. In December 2018, preliminary meetings were held in Beijing with timber industry associations, government think tanks, and NGOs to gather feedback on the OTP concept and its relevance in the Chinese context. The OTP was well received by the main stakeholders, with many organizations working in the Congo Basin expressing interest in coordinating with the OTP in the future.
Welcome to first edition of the Open Timber Portal newsletter! The Open Timber Portal is now live in the Republic of Congo (ROC)and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with more than 200 corporate documents and 200 observations uploaded. Recently, our team has expanded to accelerate the data collection and quality control processes. Additionally, we are pleased to announce that the OTP will be expanding to Cameroon.