Principles
IFM has been defined by Global Witness as “the use of an independent third party that, by agreement with state authorities, provides an assessment of legal compliance, and observation of and guidance on official forest law enforcement systems.” (Global Witness, A Guide to Independent Forest Monitoring, 2005).
IFM centres around the establishment of a partnership between an official ‘host institution’ responsible for oversight of the forest sector and an appointed monitoring organisation. The monitor’s principal activity is to conduct field investigations to observe the work of the official law enforcement agency and to document illegal activity in the forest and related trade. These investigations result in the publication of authoritative information on forest operations, which is made widely available to all levels of government, industry, and civil society.
By monitoring official forest law enforcement, IFM enables mechanisms of illegal activity and corruption to be identified. Monitors expect their evidence to be acted on and will pro-actively guard against entrenched resistance to improved governance.
Read more about this topic: Independent Forest Monitoring
Famous quotes containing the word principles:
“Struggle is the father of all things.... It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.”
—Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)
“It is not impossible, of course, after such an administration as Roosevelt’s and after the change in method that I could not but adapt in view of my different way of looking at things, that questions should arise as to whether I should go back on the principles of the Roosevelt administration.... I have a government of limited power under a Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law. Now, if that is reactionary, then I am a reactionary.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)