Indonesia and Australia Step Up Cooperation on Legal, Sustainable Forest Trade

Indonesia and Australia are strengthening bilateral forestry cooperation, with a new focus on timber legality, traceability, sustainable forest-product trade, and stronger forest protection across the Asia-Pacific.

The discussions took place alongside the 30th APEC Experts Group on Illegal Logging and Associated Trade meeting in Shenzhen, China. Indonesian officials said closer collaboration could strengthen forest governance, improve confidence in traded forest products, and ensure that sustainable trade delivers benefits to both countries.

The two sides also reviewed existing cooperation under the Australia-Indonesia Working Group on Forestry and explored opportunities to expand collaboration in sustainable forest management, ecosystem protection, law enforcement, human-resource development, and multilateral forestry initiatives.

For Indonesia, strengthening traceability and legality systems is part of a wider effort to expand market access for sustainably sourced products while ensuring that forest-dependent communities benefit from responsible forest management. Officials also see international partnerships as important for improving transparency and accountability across forest-product supply chains.

The cooperation could extend beyond forests to coastal ecosystem management, with Indonesia highlighting its plans to develop the World Mangrove Center as an international platform for mangrove research, knowledge exchange, capacity building, and conservation cooperation.

The strengthened partnership comes as both countries seek more credible and sustainable forest-product trade while addressing illegal logging and ecosystem degradation. For the wider Asia-Pacific region, closer Indonesia-Australia cooperation could help advance traceable supply chains, stronger forest governance, and sustainable management of both terrestrial and coastal ecosystems.

Indonesia-Australia forest-trade cooperation directly affects EUDR compliance credibility for corporates sourcing timber, palm oil and pulp from the region. Our supply-chain-and-operations and sustainability-due-diligence teams help clients evaluate EUDR exposure and build traceability and due-diligence infrastructure.