The EU has signed a VPA with the Government of Liberia which aims to improve forest governance and ensure that the wood imported into the EU has complied with the Liberian legal requirements. The UK Government is providing aid to support the process and the ultimate goal of developing FLEGT licenced timber.

Deforestation in the Amazon has increased 28% in the 12 months through the end of July 2013. The rise is accountable by expanding farms and a rush for land around big infrastructure projects. Changes to Brazil’s forestry laws are also attributable to the increase, as well as high global prices for agricultural commodities.

A new £15m forestry research centre at Birmingham University will study how climate change is affecting Britain's woodlands and examine how trees can be protected from the threat of invasive pests and diseases, such as the Chalara fraxinea virus which has caused the spread of Ash dieback across the country.

The Indonesian language version of the report from Human Rights Watch called “The Dark Side of Green Growth: Human Rights Impacts of Weak Governance in Indonesia’s Forestry Sector” was released today. The report says that the new FLEGT VPA between the EU and Indonesia does not address whether harvesting of the timber has violated local community rights and it does not address corruption in the issuance of timber cutting licences. The NGO is concerned that the problems related to local community rights are likely to worsen rather than improve as the government’s “green development” plan aggressively expands plantations of pulp trees for paper and oil palm for biofuel.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have joined forces to promote viable forestry investment and innovation in the Russian Federation's Far East based on sustainable use of forest resources. Improving legal frameworks and the inventory of forest resources; developing modern forestry infrastructures and supporting services, in particular railway transportation networks; introducing modern logging, as well as harvesting and wood-processing technologies; providing adequate training at local level; clearly designating and protecting forest areas of high biodiversity value are among the key Roadmap recommendations.

The actor Harrison Ford, who has been filming a documentary called ‘Years of Living Dangerously’ in Indonesia, has been threatened with deportation after confronting the forestry minister in an interview. The actor asked the minister why deforestation was occurring in protected areas after he had witnessed illegal logging taking place in Sumatra. The documentary will air on the US television network Showtime in April 2014.

Regional instability in Myanmar has led to growing incidents of illegal timber extraction, with the products being sold in to China. There are a lack of incentives for state and regional governments to properly enforce forestry operations as they are not entitled to benefit from the resources that are legally extracted. Ministers in the Myanmar central government want to see more autonomy given to state and regional governments to encourage stronger local policing and tighter control of the country’s resources.

The Indonesian Forestry Ministry claims that Indonesian forestry companies are yet to benefit from FSC certificates, particularly when compared to their involvement with the country’s own mandatory legality certification, SVLK. The ministry’s secretary general said FSC certification had not affected product prices, and advised companies that it wasn’t necessary to acquire FSC certification. The Government is obviously keen to promote its own national scheme and made these comments following FSC’s decision to revoke all certificates held by pulp & paper group, APRIL. The company has since decided to focus on legality through the SVLK scheme.

The Indonesian Forest Ministry has defended the new Law on Preventing and Eradicating Forest Destruction which passed early in July. Critics point out that the new law does not mention forest fires, cuts the prescribed punishments for certain forestry crimes, and excludes mention of the protection of indigenous groups with ancestral claims and the regulation of forest boundaries. In response, proponents of the law say that it will target large-scale operators and bureaucrats who fail to uphold the law, in addition to introducing harsher deterrence methods and allowing for better coordination between law enforcement agencies.

A documentary to be broadcast in Sweden tonight will allege that for the past two years agents working for forestry companies SCA and Holmen have been recruiting migrant workers from Cameroon to plant trees. According to the investigation workers are paid wages far below those promised by the agents and have to pay hefty sign-on fees. After the planting season many of the workers remain in Sweden as undocumented immigrants.

The Russian government has committed up to $12.4 billion over the next eight years to be spent on forestry protection. This will include restoration and improvement of species composition in forests, reducing illegal logging and addressing the black market in timber, improving aerial monitoring, cultivating trees for restoration and creating fire ponds to protect against wildfires. In response to the announcement of the policy, the CEO of the forestry company RusForest called for privatisation of the country’s forest, saying that this would incentivise longer term investment in the management of Russia’s forests. The current model is for companies such as RusForest to manage areas of forest on relatively short-term leases from the government. Russia currently imports more paper than it produces despite having around 700 million hectares of forest.

The Viet Nam Administration of Forestry announced that over 13,700 violations of forest protection and timber management laws were reported in the first six months of 2012. Around 623ha of forest land have been lost in this period as a result of changes in forest use purposes, illegal logging and forest fires. Government ministries working on the issue aim to tighten controls on the wood processing industry and local authorities have been ordered to review existing forestry projects and ensure that forest protection programmes are adequately funded.

PEFC has cleared Forestry Tasmania of unsustainable harvesting practices and re-certified the company for another three years. The audit came after allegations that the company was logging native forest at twice the rate of sustainable yield. The outcome was met with criticism from Kim Booth of the Australian Green Party who said, “the PEFC auditing that's done on Australian forestry standard harvesting methods is not worth the paper it's written on because the market's rejected it and that's the essential problem that Forestry Tasmania has fallen into”.

The State of the World’s Forests 2012 (SOFO 2012) report will be officially presented at Rio 20+ this week. The report argues that more sustainable use of forestry resources is key to meeting many of the core challenges being discussed at Rio 20+. This is through the role it can play in creating jobs in rural areas and the possibilities of recycling and carbon storage offered by sustainably managed timber products.

In a speech at CIFOR Indonesian President Yudhoyono admitted to mistakes in policy in the past which encouraged deforestation, but asserted that Indonesia is now set to become a leader in "sustainable forestry". However, CIFOR’s Daniel Murdiyarso pointed out several concerns which weren’t addressed by the speech, including the fact that a reduction in the deforestation rate does not correlate directly with a reduction in emissions: much of Indonesia’s deforestation is happening in carbon-dense peat forests which are targeted for palm oil estates and pulp and paper plantations and deforestation of these areas has a greater impact on emissions than deforestation in other areas.

In a speech at CIFOR Indonesian President Yudhoyono admitted to mistakes in policy in the past which encouraged deforestation, but asserted that Indonesia is now set to become a leader in "sustainable forestry". However, CIFOR’s Daniel Murdiyarso pointed out several concerns which weren’t addressed by the speech, including the fact that a reduction in the deforestation rate does not correlate directly with a reduction in emissions: much of Indonesia’s deforestation is happening in carbon-dense peat forests which are targeted for palm oil estates and pulp and paper plantations and deforestation of these areas has a greater impact on emissions than deforestation in other areas.

According to an Indonesian weekly news magazine the Ministry of Environment is preparing a civil suit against fourteen pulp and paper companies – twelve linked with APP and two with APRIL – for illegally clearing forests on Sumatra. The value of the timber only represents four per cent of the damages being claimed, the balance is for ‘ecological losses’. The Ministry of Forestry is opposing the lawsuit.

Allegations made against Tasmania’s state-owned forestry company of unsustainable harvesting of its native forests. PEFC is now investigating whether the company has breached its standards on managing its forests sustainably.

Summary of the latest developments in the Greenpeace APP campaign. It notes the change in tone in APP’s response: they have responded to the latest allegations regarding their use of ramin (a CITES-listed species) only by saying they are cooperating with the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry’s investigation, and didn’t follow their usual line of defence which is to question the substance of Greenpeace’s allegations.