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n September 2001, Indonesia welcomed countries from across the region to the Forest Law Enforcement and Governance East Asia Ministerial Meeting (Asia FLEG) and openly acknowledged for the first time that illegal logging was a significant problem that demanded focused attention.

The meeting produced the Bali Declaration, which sparked numerous efforts over the past decade to combat illegal logging and promote improved forest management and transparent trade in legal and sustainable wood products.

After the Bali Ministerial Meeting, in 2003, the Indonesian government launched a comprehensive, participatory and transparent process to develop a national timber legality standard to be applied to all forest management units and factories producing forest products for export and a system to ensure independent verification of companies’ compliance.

Given the technical and political complexity of the undertaking, the process took nearly seven years. But in September 2010, independent, accredited auditors began assessing concessions and factories against the standard.

To date, 12 certificates have been awarded representing an important first step in what will be a multi-year process.

The legality standard also supports the goals of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) between Indonesia and the European Union. The VPA negotiations, which concluded this month, produced a system to ensure that only timber products from legal sources in Indonesia would gain access to the lucrative European market.

The timber legality standard is the mechanism to provide such assurances. While the legality standard is geared primarily at the export market, it is clearly intended to raise the standard across the entire forestry sector in Indonesia.

Another policy initiative that traces its roots back to the Bali Ministerial Meeting is the 2002 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Indonesia and China concerning Cooperation in Combating Illegal Trade of Forest Products. This was an explicit recognition that the two countries had a shared responsibility in addressing the illegal trade in such products.

The two trading partners have since established regular communication on what was once a very sensitive issue.

In 2010, the two countries signed a second broader MoU on Forestry Cooperation to promote development of the forestry sectors in both countries.

Last week, a delegation from China’s State Forest Administration, Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs traveled to Indonesia at the invitation of the Forestry Ministry.

The delegation is keenly interested in the Indonesian legality standard as China is in the process of tightening up its own regulatory environment and putting in place mechanisms which can assure both domestic and global markets that its products — which combine both imported and domestic wood — are legal.

The visit coincided with the state visit to Jakarta of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to strengthen ties between the two countries.

The Bali Declaration, the VPA, the MoUs between Indonesia and China, a similarly-framed 2007 MoU between Indonesia and the US and the subsequent Lacey Act Amendments of 2008 in the US are all examples of the recent strengthening of policy signals across the global supply chain designed to bring sustainability to the management of forests and transparency to the trade in timber products.

Private companies, which clearly want to continue to process, manufacture, export and sell timber products, are responding to these signals and in doing so putting more pressure on forest concessions to improve the quality of management to ensure that the products flowing into their supply chains are from legal and sustainability harvested sources.

Ultimately, continued strengthening of the linkages between policy processes, legal mechanisms, and corporate practices will be required in order to translate good intentions into real results on the ground.

The Responsible Asia Forestry and Trade (RAFT) program, funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has adopted such an approach.

In addition to supporting the development of Indonesia’s timber legality standard and facilitating the linkages between Indonesian and Chinese government officials, the RAFT program has worked with more than 35 timber concessionaires covering nearly 4 million hectares.

This work has included enhancing human and institutional capacities in forest inventory, planning, road construction, and logging, as well as building skills in identifying and safeguarding important ecological attributes of the forest and negotiating agreements that benefit their adjacent community groups.

This has helped concessionaires to achieve legal verification and ultimately certification against such internationally recognized standards as those of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Indonesian Eco-labeling Institute (LEI).

While ensuring responsible operation, these certificates can provide a key comparative advantage to progressive companies looking to prosper in an increasingly global and competitive market.

Indonesia has come a long way since the 2001 Ministerial Meeting, with both government and businesses taking steps needed to improve forest management and bring transparency to the trade in timber products.

The sector is positioning itself to provide a range of social, economic and ecological benefits to the country while doing so in a way that Reduces Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), a central component of the government’s low carbon growth strategy.

While it is critical for Indonesia to continue to nurture this transformation in the forest sector and resist the powerful interests which want to maintain the business-as-usual approach to land use management, it cannot do this alone.

Much like a forest, without continued cooperation with trading partners and investment in system improvement, these emerging initiatives too will disappear, at a much higher cost for Indonesians, and citizens of the world.

Jack Hurd is the chief of party for the Responsible Asia Forestry & Trade program and Dicky Simorangkir is the forest program director for The Nature Conservancy in Indonesia.