Municipalities and forestry companies holding logging sales were made aware of the use of the Open Timber Portal (OTP) platform. The challenge of the workshop held in Bertoua-Eastern region, from January 21 to 24, 2024, is to improve forest governance, promote transparency in the forestry sector and improve the competitiveness of local wood on the international market , Did we learn.
According to Dr Fridolin Choula, business manager of the firm Connect Green Industry Solution Sarl (CGIS), which firm was recruited by World Resources Institute, with a view to raising awareness among municipalities and forestry companies regarding the OTP platform, this workshop is a continuation of that held on September 28 in Soa, a suburb of Yaoundé.
Its objectives, he continues, aim to inform municipalities and companies about the opportunities offered by OTP and train the focal points of municipalities and forestry companies to update their information on OTP, in a go. Furthermore, the workshop allows municipalities and the private sector to be consulted on the operation and use of the OTP, with a certain interest in the list of published documents and the management of data from independent observers provided by other stakeholders. It also aims to analyze the compatibility of the platform with the internal traceability systems set up by companies.
For Guy Youmbi, head of the Bokito commune forestry unit, “this workshop is an opportunity to strengthen our capacities with regard to the Open Timber Portal system. The latter allows us to be able to follow the news on forestry exploitation, especially with the paradigm shift which today invites us to move to the zero-deforestation exploitation regulation system. Furthermore, this type of workshop allows us to improve the way we work. As OPT focal point in the commune of Bokito [dans la région du Centre, département du Mbam-et-Inoubou, Ndlr] our role is to introduce legal data from the municipal forest into the platform in order to promote transparency in the management of the municipal forests of this municipality in the platform.
As for the OTP focal point in the commune of Ambam in the South region, “the marketing of wood requires a lot of documents. The platform facilitates the circulation of said documents. If you have several partners, they can directly upload the necessary documentation into the platform. The latter also increases the visibility of the commune, indicated Minko Assoumou.
OTP, we learn, allows all players in the sector to work on a fair basis which is that of transparency so that the benefits of logging can return to local populations. Indeed, this platform makes previously inaccessible information available to the public on forest management practices in the field and on compliance with timber legality requirements.
This portal, we note, compiles information from three different sources, namely the official boundaries of concessions and the list of registered forest operators from the administration responsible for forests; documents put online voluntarily by operators to demonstrate their compliance with legal requirements and observations made by independent structures in the forestry sector.
In addition, the promoters of the said platform point out, it is free. “Companies just need to create an account and have a password for the part that concerns the insertion of documents and the consultation is opened without a password.”
The Open Timber Portal was designed by the World Resources Institute in collaboration with government agencies, representatives of the private sector as well as a number of local civil society organizations, we learn.
In addition to its initial mission mentioned above, the platform also provides a state of OTP accounting with the internal traceability systems set up by companies/municipalities.
This awareness workshop is in line with the voluntary partnership agreement concluded in October 2010 between Cameroon and the European Union.
