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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Big Powers Launch Plan to Save Forests

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

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.

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