Indonesia covers about 181.2 million hectares, spread over 17 000 islands. About 70% of its land area is categorised as forested, with half allocated for production purposes. Almost one third or 34.8 million hectares of national forest land is deforested or degraded. In addition, 12.8 million hectares, or 10.7% of the national forest land, is designated for non-forestry use. Of this, about half is forested.

Indonesia is one of the world's largest exporters of tropical timber products, which are produced from logging activities in natural forests, industrial plantations and household-managed small-scale plantings, as well as from imported timber. Indonesia exports a wide variety of timber products, ranging from plywood, pulp and paper to furniture and handicrafts. The value of this trade was EUR 10.4 billion in 2019. 

The main export markets are in Asia (China, Japan and South Korea). Indonesia is also by far the biggest FLEGT VPA-country trade partner of the EU, exporting timber products worth EUR 1.1 billion in 2019.

In 2003, Indonesia started to develop an operator-based timber control system for all its timber exports, building on a mandatory third-party certification approach for legality and sustainability. The system, called SVLK, became the basis for the timber legality assurance system under Indonesia’s Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the EU. The VPA covers all exports, and its coverage will expand to include the domestic market on a stepwise basis.

On 15 November 2016, Indonesia began issuing FLEGT licences to verified legal timber products exported to the EU. In 2017, Indonesia issued 38 961 licences for shipments exported to all 28 EU Member States, with a total value of more than one billion euros. In 2019, there were 40 261 licences issued for the export of timber products (for more information see Indonesia’s SILK database).