Mahogany Sellers, Buyers Reach Compromise
6/20/97
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Title: Mahogany Sellers, Buyers Reach Compromise
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 6/20/97
Byline: Emelia Sithole
HARARE, June 20 (Reuter) - Major importers and exporters of bigleaf mahogany at
an international convention on endangered species reached a last-minute
compromise on Friday on conservation measures.
Brazil, which strongly opposed a proposal by the United States and Bolivia for
stricter controls at a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES) in Harare, proposed to convene a working group of states to develop
recommendations on conservation within 18 months.
Brazil, Bolivia and Mexico also pledged to list their plantings of bigleaf
mahogany -- one of the most prized and endangered Amazon trees -- on CITES'
Appendix III.
Appendix III is adopted by individual countries to protect their indigenous
species and track international trade in them.
The CITES meeting which ended on Friday was within minutes from a vote to
reopen debate on the U.S.-Bolivia proposal to list mahogany on the convention's
Appendix II, which allows for strictly controlled trade, when Brazil proposed
the compromise.
Brazil on Wednesday abstained from voting to include mahogany in Appendix II.
The vote was defeated when the proponents failed to get the required two-thirds
majority.
Environmental watchdog Greenpeace, campaigning for stricter mahogany trade
controls, charged Brazil worked behind the scenes against the proposal. The
Brazilians declined to comment.
On Thursday, Greenpeace called for an international boycott of timber from the
Amazon to counter what it said was Brazil's defence of uncontrolled logging in
the rain forest.
However on Friday, the group said the compromise was an important initiative
and a major move forward.
But it said it could not yet advise consumers that bigleaf mahogany was ``an
ecologically sustainable product'' as no measures had yet been put in place to
curtail destructive illegal trade.
``Greenpeace stands ready to contribute to the mahogany working group and hopes
that significant concrete measures necessary to halt the very real threats to
this rainforest species are made sooner rather than later,'' said Isabel
McCrea, head of Greenpeace's delegation to the CITES forum.
``We would like to see Brazil back up the commitments made at this conference
with an immediate halt to all mahogany exports which do not come from approved
management plan areas,'' she said.