Press Release Detail

The following statement was delivered in Parliament on Friday 8^th April, 2022 by the Attorney General Hon. Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum on behalf of the Prime Minister and Minister for Forestry Hon. JV Bainimarama. The Prime Minister was engaged with the people of Serua opening the Provincial Council Meeting. The statement was in response to Opposition member Honourable Mitieli Bulanauca’s question for an update on the Ministry of Forestry’s “Say No to Illegal Logging” initiative.

Illegal Logging - one of the largest environmental crimes

Illegal logging is a major problem across the world and in all types of forests. It has serious negative impacts on the environment and forest ecosystems, communities and economies. It undermines the legitimacy of the forest sector and hinders the efforts to implement sustainable forest management. It also depresses the market value of timber, while disadvantaging those companies that engage in legal and sustainable logging and trade. It is a huge disadvantage to the majority of the landowning communities as well.

The United Nations estimates that illegal logging costs the global community up to US$206 billion each year. This makes it one of the largest environmental crimes by economic value in the world today.

Fiji is not immune to illegal logging and the trade of illegally logged timber. In Vanua for example Levu alone, a total of 29 cases were recorded from January 2017 to January 2022. The most common illegal logging practices in Fiji include:

-  harvesting, transportation, and purchase or sale of timber in contravention or violation of national laws such as the Forest Act, Environment Management Act and the iTaukei Land Trust Act, among others;

-   extraction of CITES listed species, deliberately encroaching into forests adjacent to a licensed logging area, logging in protected areas such as forest reserves, logging in prohibited areas such as steep slopes, riverbanks, and catchment areas including buffers, and removing under-sized trees; 

- falsifying declarations of volume or species harvested as well as export documentations, transporting logs without truck passes or outdated truck passes, ignoring waste disposal and environment impact assessment screening processes, and operating sawmills without valid licences; and

-  dishonest practices resulting in only a few benefiting from forestry deals at the expense of the majority of the landowning communities and we saw that quite significantly and Hon Bulanauca would know about this. A lot of illegal logging took place in the days before the mahogany industry was regulated.

Partnerships for a formidable front
To curb illegal logging and to help enforce our national laws and regulations, the Ministry of Forestry formalised partnerships through Memorandum of Understanding with agencies like the Fiji Revenue and Customs Service, Fiji Bureau of Statistics, Fiji National Provident Fund, Ministry of Employment, Productivity and Industrial Relations and the Fiji Police Force.

It is working very closely with the Ministry of Environment to ensure that licences for logging, sawmilling or treatment plants are issued only after an assessment has been conducted on the environmental impacts, and the Ministry of Environment has approved either the environmental management plan or the more detailed environmental impact assessment.

The Ministry is also strengthening its relationship with the iTaukei Land Trust Board especially to clearly identify not only the genuine landowners but to also make sure that the majority of them - at least 60% - have agreed to the harvesting of trees on their respective lands. The latest development with TLTB is the sharing of access to the online harvesting licensing system which the Honourable Prime Minister had the honour of launching 3 weeks ago. This will help expedite our business facilitation processes also.

All these partnerships form a formidable front to cut down illegal forest activities and ensure that forest based companies provide appropriate safety working conditions for their staff, pay their staff the correct wages and FNPF, and also pay the correct amount of taxes. Importantly, they aim to strengthen our efforts to protect the environment as a way to address Climate Change as any environmental damage caused by any hastily and poorly planned operations can be irreparable. 

The partnerships will also help to ensure that fair compensation is provided to the resource owners through correct and timely royalty and stumpage payments, and where appropriate lease payments. Additionally the partnerships will ensure that the total contribution of the forestry sector is accurately measured and reflected in the country’s gross domestic product.

Pledge picking momentum
The Ministry launched the “Say no to illegal logging” pledge in Labasa on the 11^th of February 2022. The aim is to create greater public awareness and to gather support from as many stakeholders as possible to curb illegal logging.

Close to 300 individuals have signed up to the pledge since its launch. These include farmers, land owning units, licensed loggers, government officials and private companies. 68% of the pledges are from the landowning units and we expect the momentum to increase as we continue to conduct awareness through the tikina and provincial meetings, through our ongoing discussions with the members of the timber industry, through increasing media awareness, and also right here in Parliament.

The pledge is being piloted in Vanua Levu before it is implemented in Viti Levu and other areas.

Investigation and prosecution training

The Ministry is also in discussion with the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption where a number of illegal logging cases have been filed, to also strengthen partnership, including running the “Say no to illegal logging” pledge in parallel with FICAC’s “I don’t accept bribes” campaign.  

The Ministry is building the capacity of the staff and we wish to thank both FICAC and the DPP for the training opportunities that they have and are providing to the Ministry staff on investigation and prosecution processes.

Forests for carbon trading
It would be great for all members to support this “Say no to illegal logging” pledge because it is critically important to us and I’m sure that we would all agree that we need to protect our forests and when the forests are harvested we need to be able to do so in a sustainable manner.

We also need to protect indigenous tree species, for which the Ministry of Forestry has a nursery. And we also need to look at forestry in a very different manner. Currently, our way of valuing forests is only when it’s cut down and when that contributes to GDP.  But, as highlighted in the Climate Change Act, we can still have that GDP contribution of the forestry sector by keeping the trees in the ground, through carbon trading.