US, Canada & Brazil Thwart Global Forest Plan

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

11/13/96

OVERVIEW & SOURCE by EE

In a shocking display of obstructionism, the US, Canada and Brazil

used their clout at the Third Conference of the Parties to the

Convention on Biodiversity to delay global action on forests for

another 18 months. It is critical that world governments turn the

corner, and acknowledge that the world's forests are uniformly in

decline, and begin to develop remedial policies. Failure to do so

immediately significantly decreases the amount of forests and

biological resources that will be available to meet future needs for

forest products, continued provision of forest ecosystem functions and

the amount of biological materials available for eventual forest

restoration activities. What remains of native virgin old growth and

other significant second growth must be put off limits to industrial

forestry practices. Mixed species plantations and massive forest

landscape restoration must begin. The blocking of action to begin to

address forest decline is irresponsible and a disservice to humanity.

g.b.

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US, Canada, Brazil thwart global forest plan - WWF

11/12/96

BUENOS AIRES (Reuter) - The United States, Canada and Brazil have

blocked agreement on a plan to protect the world's forests at a nature

conservation conference in Argentina, environmentalists said Tuesday.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said that at a late Monday night

session of the Third Conference of the Parties to the Convention on

Biodiversity, delegates from those countries used their clout to

silence critics and negotiate a delay in forest action for another 18

months.

"There will not be a full work program until at least May 1998, when

the Conference of the Parties meets again," Steve Howard, WWF forest

conservation officer, told Reuters.

"In that time there will be about 110 million acres of forest lost.

The research hasn't been done to even say how many species we'll lose.

We don't know the scale of the problem we're facing."

WWF said this was equivalent to one and a half times the total forest

cover of Argentina. It said the rate of deforestation of some of the

world's key eco-systems has been estimated to have increased by more

than one third since 1992.

The four-year-old Convention on Biodiversity, aimed at protecting the

diversity of ecosystems and species, has been ratified by 162

countries but not the United States.

WWF said the conference Monday night also failed to agree on a

priority list of research activities on forests proposed by the

convention's own scientific advisory group.

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