Big Powers Launch Plan to Save Forests
5/9/98
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE
The G-8 has announced a plan to pursue sustainable forest management.
The biggest risk is the plan will not realize that significant and
major forest preservation set-asides are a prerequisite for sustaining
forest landscapes. Forests under sustainable management require
adjacent, large untouched areas of natural, unmanaged forests. While
it is questionable that this declaration will lead to on the ground
forest conservation, the fact that the G-8 is taking up such an issue
is indicative of the increased global awareness of rapid forest
decline.
g.b.
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Title: Big powers launch plan to save forests
Source: Reuters
Status: Contact source for permission to reprint
Date: May 9, 1998
Byline: Susan Cornwell
LONDON, May 9, (Reuters) - Seeking to halt the destruction of the
earth's forests, eight major powers announced an "action programme" on
Saturday to support sustainable forest management worldwide.
The Group of Eight nations meeting in London made a political
commitment to protect their own forests, and said they would try to
encourage other countries to follow suit by focusing aid programmes on
nations that make forest preservation a priority.
The eight countries -- the United States, Britain, France, Italy,
Canada, Germany, Japan and Russia -- also said they would address
illegal logging and help develop counter-measures to stop it.
The forest policy was released along with other more traditional G8
communiques on international finance and politics. But officials said
they were particularly pleased with the forest plan because it was an
example of how the G8 can produce "concrete, action-oriented solutions
to global problems."
"Recent large-scale forest fires lend urgency to this task," the G8
communique said.
The idea for the G8 to take action to help protect forests had emerged
last year at the group's summit in Denver, and Saturday's plan was the
result.
The G8 countries pledged to assess the state of their own forests,
classify protected areas and set up "national forest programmes" to
oversee sustainable forest management instead of leaving it to
competing levels of government and indigenous peoples.
Tacitly acknowledging that many of the endangered forests are in the
developing world, the G8 members said they would also "focus technical
and financial assistance on those partner countries which give
priority to sustainable forest management."
The statement said they would work with the private sector, especially
forest-related industries, to develop and apply voluntary codes of
conduct that support sustainable forest management.
The statement also pledged the G8 countries to share information on
the extent of illegally harvested timber as a basis for developing
practical and effective counter-measures to stop it.