Speaker

Mr. Chen Hin Keong

Mr. Chen has over 20 years experience working on conservation and environmental issues globally.  During the course of his career, he has worked with and interacted with a wide range of organisations from the civil society in the Asia-Pacific region.  He is the Chair of the ITTO’s Civil Society Advisory Group (CSAG).  He has been working with TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network for over 20 years, initially managing the programme on wildlife trade in South East Asia and in the last 15 years as the Timber Trade Programme Leader, working on illegal logging, timber supply chain transparency and forestry governance issues.  Chen has worked on the role of customs in controlling and enforcing illegal timber trade and is working on developing a timber trade manual for frontline customs officers for the World Customs Organisation. Chen coordinated the development of a common framework for assessing legality of forestry and timber trade for 16 countries. This framework can be considered the best compilation of the laws into a set of principles and criteria that encompasses all aspects of forestry, management, conservation, processing, industry, and trade of timber.