World Meeting to Decide Fate of Timber Pact

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

9/12/96

OVERVIEW & SOURCE by EE

Countries producing and consuming tropical timber meet this week to decide

whether the controversial 1994 International Tropical Timber Agreement

(ITTA) should be implemented. While essentially an agreement which

legitimizes continued industrial exploitation of dwindling rainforests, the

agreement does call for tropical timber producing countries to export wood

only from sustainably managed sources by the year 2000. This weak and half

hearted effort to control rainforest diminishment nonetheless sets the

stage for the types of international agreements which will be necessary to

rationalize the timber trade worldwide. The following is a photocopy of a

Reuters news article.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Countries meeting to decide fate of timber pact

9/12/96

GENEVA, Sept 12 (Reuter) - Countries producing and consuming tropical

timber will meet in Geneva on Friday to decide whether a controversial

global accord reached in 1994 should go into force, United Nations

officials said on Thursday.

The one-day meeting has been convened by Rubens Ricupero, secretary-general

of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), at the request of

the Yokohama-based International Tropical Timber Council.

An UNCTAD statement said the meeting would decide whether the long-

negotiated 1994 International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA), which does

not provide for direct market intervention, should be implemented

definitively or only provisionally.

It was due to replace a 1983 agreement from February last year but the

timing was delayed, partly because the United States, the third-largest

importer of tropical timber, and Brazil, the third exporter, failed to

ratify the accord.

Specialists said at the time of its approval it would be effective only if

all major players were involved.

World trade in tropical timber -- logs, plywood and veneer sheets --

accounts for some $7.5 billion, about 10 per cent of all timber trade.

The 1994 accord aims to promote the expansion and diversification of

international trade in these products from sustainable sources by improving

structural conditions in, and access to, international markets.

Under the pact, tropical timber producers -- such as Malaysia, Indonesia

and Brazil -- pledged to try to export wood only from sustainably-managed

forests by the year 2000.

Consumer nations, mainly industrialised economies, agreed they would try to

do the same for their own non-tropical timber exports, but resisted efforts

to extend the accord to cover temperate and boreal forests also.

At the time Brazil criticised the consumer powers for refusing to allow

broadening of the pact's scope. It has a provision for review, and possible

extension, four years after it goes into effect.

The pact also disappointed environmental groups, who were arguing for

export limits as part of a campaign to combat deforestation and achieve

forest sustainability by the end of the century.

This target was also set by the U.N.'s Conference on Environment and

Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro at summit level in June 1992.

Representatives from some 50 countries which produce and consume timber and

timber products are meeting in Geneva to work out recommendations on

preserving the world's endangered forests that will be presented to another

U.N. summit next year.

Environmental groups say they fear little concrete will emerge from that

meeting, which wraps up at the end of next week, because of pressure from

powerful multinational and national logging companies.

Producer countries which have formally approved the 1994 ITTA so far are

Bolivia, Burma, Cameroon, Congo, Ivory Coast, Ecuador, Gabon, Ghana,

Honduras, Indonesia, Liberia, Malaysia, Panama, Papua-New Guinea, Peru,

Philippines, Tailand and Togo.

Consumer states who have ratified are Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada,

China, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Japan, Luxemburg, Netherlands, New

Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

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