Browsing by Author "Hoang, Nam Phuong"

Illegal logging has become one of the most prominent issues in the last few decades. It causes environmental damage, lost in government revenue from timber production as well as promotes negative social issues such as corruption, conflict, etc. Various efforts such as enhance forest law enforcement, logs banned, public procurement policies, etc., have been propose by both consuming and producing countries. FLEGT Action Plan introduced by European Union in 2003 is the Union attempts to minimise illegal logging by exclude illegal timber product from EU’s market together with enhance and support the law enforcement as well as governance in producing countries. The purpose of this study is to provide useful information concerning operators’ perception of FLEGT issues. The main question of the study is: “What are the EU timber operators’ perceptions concerning FLEGT and EUTR?” Quantitative method is applied to the study. Data for the study is obtain through various channels, including online survey, distribution of questionnaire in conference and calling session. The result shows that operators are aware of negative effects of illegal logging and they believe that company needs to have good environmental image. Operators also support strict policy measure to be implemented in order to prevent illegal timber trade. However, they are reluctant to cope with the constraints cause by these policies. Operators acknowledge the benefit FLEGT Action Plan and EUTR create such as improve forest governance for producing countries, preventing illegal timber entering EU market. However, they still have doubt on the ability to prevent illegal logging of FLEGT Action Plan as well as the benefit EUTR able to offer both operators and the supplying countries. Furthermore, the result of this study also shows that the operators might have negative attitude toward EUTR since their perceived sacrifice on EUTR is dominated over the perceived benefits. This negative attitude can be caused by the incomprehension on FLEGT issues. The operators might gain positive attitude toward FLEGT issues once they truly understand the long term goal of FLEGT Action Plan. Finally, it is important to have an effective communication strategy which would help operators comprehend FLEGT issues so they would be able to have appropriate perception toward FLEGT Action Plan in general and EUTR in particular.