Tong Tana December 1999 - Bruno Manser Fonds

Speaking of Wood
ITTO’s “Target 2000”
“Trees can die and birds can fly.”
Quote from a member of the Sawarak Government.
jk – The International Tropical Timber Organization ITTO,
an association of all countries exporting and importing
tropical timber, was founded for the purpose of achieving
better global market access. Japan as main consumer
and Malaysia as largest producer have the main
say. Originally only meant to be a trade organization,
the ITTO was confronted during the late 1980s with
awakening protests against logging in the tropical rainforests
and as a result began to work towards the sustainable
production of tropical wood. Malaysia, pilloried
internationally for its devastating and inhumane
logging policies in Sarawak, was the first country to
call the ITTO for help in 1989, hoping that the UN
organization would help to break the boycott and thus
to improve its image. The ITTO mission, however, came
to the conclusion that in Sarawak at the most only
9.2 million m 3 /year could be logged sustainably (in
1989 over 18 million m 3 was cut!) and gave the
Malaysian state time to reach this goal until the year
2000. The figure shows, however, that Sarawak does
not only lie far from this goal but also that hardly anything
has changed during the past 10 years! The reduction
in production since 1993 can be mainly attributed
to the exhaustion of resources, whereas the low
figure of 1998 is due to the global economic and
financial crisis of 97/98 when the Asian market collapsed.
During the early 1990s the ITTO – i.e. the industry
itself – promised to boycott the trade in timber
from non-sustainable production as of January 2000.
Lately the ITTO has become suddenly very quiet. One
cannot hear a thing about how far the various member
states have realized the set “objectives for 2000”.
Even Switzerland, a founding member of the ITTO and
among the current 24 importing countries the largest
financial contributor after Japan (total 53 member
states), has committed itself to only trade in wood from
sustainable production from 2000 on. State Secretary
David Werner Syz is responsible for the realization.
Please write to the responsible person in your country
and ask her what efficient measures she will undertake
to prevent further imports of timber from nonsustainably-managed
forests border!
Address Switzerland: Secrétariat d’Etat à l’Economie
(SECO), Effingerstr. 1, CH-3011 Bern, Switzerland.
Fax: ++41(0)31 324 10 00 – everyone is invited to
support the ITTO in reaching its goals – thank you very
much!
Global free trade with forest
products
bm – New Zealand, one of the 21 member states of the
APEC (Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum), is
pressing the World Trade Organization WTO to drop all
customs duties on forestry and paper products until
2003. Friends of the Earth (FoE) warn that this proposal,
if accepted, will lead to the degradation of further
forested areas, as it does not contain any protective
measures at all. Only one fifth of the original
forests of our planet are still undisturbed. According to
the World Resources Institute the timber industry is
threatening 72% of these forested areas and is thus by
far the most important cause of forest destruction. As
the APEC states are annually losing double the amount
of forest area (0.62%) as the rest of the world (0.3%)
percentage-wise, it is obvious that the APEC cannot
play role model for global trade regulations. Measures
are necessary which stipulate sustainable management
as a prerequisite for trade, nationally as well as
internationally.
25
ITTO-directive
Sarawak Log-Production 1970–98
20
10
Annual cut (million m 3 )
15
10
5
70 73 76 79 82 85 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98
Source: Sarawak Timber Association