Global Forest Trade Battle Looming

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Archives

http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest Conservation

7/4/99

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

The following article relates to the international campaign of

resistance shaping up against the World Trade Organization (WTO). WTO

is currently negotiating a new agreement on forest products. Free

trade is to be used as a battering ram to rule on tariffs and the

legality of member nation's environmental policies. The threat is

that consumption of forest products will increase without regard to

environmental and conservation concerns. This must not be allowed to

happen. Forest conservation and sustainability is not a trade

restriction. It is self-survival.

g.b.

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Title: Global Forest Trade Battle Shaping Up

Source: Environment News Service, http://ens.lycos.com/

Date: July 1, 1999

SEATTLE, Washington, July 1, 1999 (ENS) - International forest

protection leaders have announced a global campaign to derail World

Trade Organization (WTO) plans to write trade agreements that they

believe will threaten the world's forests at the upcoming WTO

Ministerial meeting this November.

The WTO's 3rd Ministerial Conference, scheduled November 30 to

December 3 at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in

Seattle, will open the next major world trade negotiations due to

start early in 2000. Ministers and other senior officials from over

150 governments are expected to attend.

The meeting will chaired by United States Trade Representative

Charlene Barshefsky, and it will launch global negotiations to further

open markets in goods, services, and agricultural trade.

"The WTO is a threat to forests around the world, and forest

protection activists around the world will work to stop it," said

former U.S. Congressman from Indiana Jim Jontz, now executive director

of American Lands Alliance.

The campaign announcement followed a forest protection meeting held

outside Seattle that included 40 activists from 14 countries.

Representatives came from forest products exporting nations Indonesia,

Chile, Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand, Canada, and Russia, where the bulk

of the remaining old growth forests are located, and from heavy forest

products using countries Japan, the United States and the European

Union.

The organizations outlined regional problems in which proposed WTO

trade initiatives would accelerate forest destruction.

"With such diversity and depth of experience, we are confident of

ending WTO measures that will increase consumption of forest products

without any regard for the well-being of the environment," said

conference organizer Victor Menotti of International Forum on

Globalization, a San Francisco based alliance of activists, scholars,

economists and writers.

The coalition has support within the U.S. Congress for its forest

protectionist stance. Congressman George Miller, a California Democrat

and Congressman Merill Cook, a Utah Republican, circulated a letter to

their congressional colleagues in May that stated the threat to

forests this way. "The World Trade Organization (WTO) is currently

negotiating a new agreement on forest products. The agreement would

eliminate tariffs on forest products in developed countries by the

year 2000 and developing countries by 2003. In addition, negotiators

are discussing the reduction of non-tariff barriers to trade. The

agreement would expand the market for forests products without

protecting domestic laws or encouraging sustainable logging practices

or protecting endangered forests, ecosystems or biodiversity," the two

lawmakers wrote.

Miller and Cook want the Clinton administration to stop negotiating

for trade liberalization in forest products, "at least and until a

comprehensive assessment is conducted."

Ambassador Barshefsky has stated that completion of the forest

products agreement is one of the United States' primary trade targets

going into the third Ministerial meeting of the WTO, in Seattle this

November.

Barshefsky said last week she would "continue to press" Japan to

promote trade liberalization measures in nine sectors including

forestry products. Japan is the country with the second highest number

of housing starts, a primary use for forest products.

This type of pressure on the world's forests is just what the global

campaign launched this week aims to derail. The groups said in a

position statement, "The WTO is bad for forests. Measures to expedite

trade in forest products will increase consumption without

concurrently implementing conservation measures."

"In the WTO, trade provisions are supreme over the laws of nations,

taking power away from local communities and governments and giving it

to corporations. This makes it a direct threat not only to the world's

remaining forests, but also to basic individual and states' rights,"

the coalition stated.

Wood consumption could increase by between three and four percent if

tariffs came down worldwide, said Maureen Smith, vice president

international of the American Forest & Paper Association.

The U.S. forest industry's view of how international trade should

develop was expressed in testimony before the U.S. International Trade

Commission May 26. W. Henson Moore, president and CEO of the American

Forest & Paper Association, the industry's trade group, said the

industry lacks the same open access to foreign markets enjoyed by its

competitors in the U.S. market.

Moore said restrictive trade practices by competing nations and U.S.

domestic policies are jeopardizing the future of the industry and its

workforce.

In their international meeting, the forest protection coalition

developed strategies to preempt decisions at the Seattle Ministerial.

Each group will bring pressure to bear on the WTO, from lobbying

governments to demonstrations in the streets of Seattle.

"Seattle is a hotbed of forestry activism," said Paige Fischer of

Pacific Environment and Resources Center. "The WTO is coming here to

sign deals that will fast-track the destruction of the world's

forests, so they can expect significant opposition."

The International Forum on Globalization is organizing a teach-in on

the World Trade Organization to be held in Seattle, Washington, on

November 27, a few days before the WTO Ministerial meeting. The event

at the 2,500-seat Benaroya Seattle Symphony Hall will focus on the

problems of economic globalization and on the activities of the WTO

and other international agreements and institutions.

Forest protection organizations at the Seattle meeting, from the USA

unless otherwise indicated, included: A SEED (UK), American Lands

Alliance, Bureau for Regional Public Campaigning (Russia/Siberia),

Citizens Committee of Puerto Mott (Chile), Earth Justice Law Center,

Forum on the Environment (Indonesia), Friends of the Earth, GATT

Watchdog (New Zealand), International Forum on Globalization,

Institute for Socio-Economic Analysis (Brazil), Otway Foundation

(Chile), Pacific Environment and Resources Center, Raincoast

Conservation Society (Canada), Rainforest Action Network, Sierra Club,

Tropical Forest Kyoto (Japan), Valhalla Wilderness Society (Canada),

World Forest Movement (UK).

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