Mandatory Legal Timber Validation (MLTV)

Mandatory Legal Timber Validation (MLTV) is the “compulsory, country level” approach to SGS’s portfolio of Independent Verification of Legal Timber (IVLT) services.

MLTV is designed for implementation as a national scheme enforcing a programme of continuous monitoring and verification of wood production and tracking information, also capturing any imports. It involves the creation of a long-term operational partnership between the government and SGS as an internationally credible independent verifier.

MLTV provides efficient and reliable verification that all companies, across a whole country or province, consistently comply with specific legal requirements. To achieve this, MLTV incorporates a tailored combination of the following elements:

• Verification of Legal Origin (VLO): verification of e.g. production rights, chain of ownership, tax payments and adherence to production quotas, to demonstrate that logs and timber products have been legally sourced.
  
  
• Verification of Legal Compliance (VLC): assessment of the timber producer for compliance with all relevant national legislation, including laws relating to forest management planning, land management and forest exploitation, to demonstrate that logs and timber products have been legally produced.

As the issue of illegal logging and poor management is increasingly being addressed in importing countries by measures designed to deny market access to illegal forest products, MLTV supports trade facilitation: MLTV Statements are issued and officially validated Export Permits are granted to consignments of timber that meet the criteria of agreed VLO and VLC modules. The requirements may be tightened as MLTV is gradually implemented. Eventually the system can be applied to the domestic market as well. The entire production of a country or region monitored under MLTV can be deemed legal.

Since 1995, SGS has been successfully running independent monitoring and verification programmes in a number of African, Asian and Latin American countries. These existing programmes have a potential to evolve towards a more comprehensive MLTV framework.

Key activities of MLTV:

• Timber Flow Control consists in the tracking and physical inspection of products and documents, using advanced technology to identify and monitor the domestic, import/transit and export flows of forest products.
  
  
• Forest Management Auditing & Monitoring uses documentary and field checks to investigate how resource management is planned and how management plans are being implemented in legitimate logging areas.
  
  
• Land Use Control & Forest Surveillance is a GIS-based work in which data from remote sensing imagery and ground verification is collected and interpreted to monitor changes in land cover or occupation, and verify them against planned land use.