World Timber Pact Meeting
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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
World Meeting to Decide Fate of Timber Pact
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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.
Countries meeting to decide fate of timber pact
Copyright 1996 by Reuters
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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