Mahogany Fails to Get CITES Listing
6/18/97
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Headline: Mahogany Fails to Get CITES Listing
Source: WWW
Date: 6/18/97
FOE RENEWS BOYCOTT CALL AS MAHOGANY FAILS TO GET CITES LISTING
The proposal to include mahogany on Appendix II of CITES, the
global convention on trade in endangered species, was defeated at
the CITES conference in Harare late today (18 June), despite the
fact that the majority of those voting supported the listing.
Although 67 countries voted in favour of the proposal, 45 voted
against and 9 abstained, and the proposal failed to reach the
two-thirds majority required for approval. The defeat comes after
intensive last-minute lobbying by Brazil, the world's major
exporter and the main source of mahogany traded in the UK.
However, although Brazil spoke out against the proposal, claiming
they had domestic controls in place, after the secret ballot they
tried to deflect criticism of their position by announcing that
they had abstained from the vote. They called on importers and
NGOs to support them in implementing their domestic controls.
On Monday, Friends of the Earth, which has been campaigning for
legal controls on the mahogany trade since 1992 and has repeatedly
demonstrated the failure of current measures, issued a press
release saying they would stop their call for a consumer boycott
of mahogany and cooperate with Brazil if the Appendix II listing
went ahead. A listing on Appendix II of the CITES convention
would have required exporting countries to demonstrate that the
timber had been produced legally and sustainably, and would have
helped traders and governments work towards a sustainable trade.
The defeat of the proposal is extremely bad news for the future of
the Amazon rainforest, and means a renewal of calls for a consumer
boycott of mahogany.
Sarah Tyack of Friends of the Earth, attending the CITES
conference in Harare, said:
"It is a tragedy that this major opportunity to control and manage
the mahogany trade has been missed, despite the fact that the
majority of countries voting supported introduction of the
measures. Since this attempt to get multilateral, legal
regulation of the trade has failed, Friends of the Earth will
renew its campaign for a boycott of this unsustainably and often
illegally produced timber."