PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Law and Development Associates (LADA) was contracted as the Forestry Commissions' (FC) Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) compliance consultant. LADA offered several services to the FC to ensure the export of timber in Ghana was legal, and in compliance with the VPA. Some of these services included conducting gap analyses, creating an annotation of the principles and requirements of the VPA, designing an action plan, designing a wood tracking system; and from discussions with senior management, designing a licensing authority, establishing a timber validation department and council, appointing independent monitors, creating the legality assurance scheme, instituting bar codes for the identification of legal timber; and finally, drafting a stop legislative instrument to be upheld until awaiting legislation was passed.