Brief 3: Knowledge Gaps – Priorities for Future Research on Forest Product Micro-, Small-, and Medium-Sized Enterprises
Little and Legal: Micro-, Small-, and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) within the Emerging Timber Legality Paradigm
By Andrea Johnson - CATIE-Finnfor View PublicationThis series of briefs attempts to contribute greater clarity to the debate by disaggregating the diversity of micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and providing a conceptual starting point for more coherent dialogues and targeted, impactful policy and research design. It encompasses the diversity of MSMEs because the globalized reach of many wood product supply chains, and the rapid increase of South-South trade flows, obscure the lines between local and international trade. Further, all but one Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) signed to date in Africa and Asia include the aspirational goal of achieving legality in domestic trade as well, making national markets a necessary part of the discussion. Brief 3 presents priority directions for applied research that will contribute to finding concrete, specific answers to the pressing question of how to better support MSMEs as part of thriving, legal wood product sectors that generate economic, social, and ecological benefits.
Brief 1: Unpacking the Diversity of Micro-, Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises