Dear List Members,
I think that we could start debating the Global Forest Convention using the points expressed in the "INTERNATIONAL CITIZEN DECLARATION AGAINST A GLOBAL FOREST CONVENTION" (allegedly representing the views of millions of people world-wide). These points, reproduced from the press release, are presented below. I think that each of them can be seriously challenged. For example, the third point suggests that the Biodiversity Convention and other existing environmental agreements and initiatives would be appropriate to address global forestry issues. I think this is not very serious because there is currently a very high institutional fragmentation regarding global forestry. Biodiversity is only one dimension of sustainable forestry so that it is far from obvious that the Biodiversity Convention is the right forum to address sustainable forestry at the global level. Regarding other agreements and organisations, I don't think these environmental groups suggest to strengthen !
FAO or
ITTO, as these organisations have attracted considerable criticism from environmental groups. So, I suppose one of the organisations they would like to see strengthened is the Forest Stewardship Council, which has been set up by several of these environmental groups (notably WWF-International) to support the voluntary labelling of forest products. The relevance of strengthening the Forest Stewardship Council (this initiative is also implicitly referred to at the fifth point of the press release) can, however, be seriously challenged. First, the impact on sustainable forest management of the voluntary certification / labelling of forest products is uncertain and most likely to be marginal. This was confirmed by the conclusions of a conference held last summer in Brisbane on the subject (http://www.dpie.gov.au/dpie/conference/icocal/outcomes/conc-eng.html). Second, the forest management standards adopted by the Forest Stewardship Council have, for a variety of reasons, not at!
tracte
d, and are unlikely to attract, wide consensus. Third, the professionalism of the Forest Stewardship Council has been severely questioned, notably through the Flora y Fauna (the "Teak Scandal") and the more recent Isoroy episodes. So, to sum up, I think it is far from clear that the advocated strategy of strengthening existing environmental agreements and organisations is likely to yield very tangible results in terms of sustainable forestry. The argument put forward in the press release is thus pretty weak to justify an opposition to a treaty on forests. A counter argument is obviously that the negotiation of such a treaty would be a very good opportunity to build up, largely by streamlining the mandates of existing organisations with a forestry mandate, a coherent set of international institutions to effectively address sustainable forestry at a global level.
I hope that we can start a useful discussion starting from here.
Best regards,
Jean-Pierre Kiekens
Universite libre de Bruxelles
Excerpts of the INTERNATIONAL CITIZEN DECLARATION AGAINST A GLOBAL FOREST CONVENTION
Our organizations, representing millions of people worldwide, believe that a forest convention negotiated at this time not only
will fail to effectively safeguard the world's forests, but could actually threaten them. We believe negotiation of such a premature convention:
* ENSHRINING WEAK STANDARDS
will only be able to achieve political consensus on the
weakest, lowest-common-denominator commitments, and could
formalize unacceptably weak forest management standards,
thereby giving a global 'green light' to unsustainable forest
practices and crippling several existing, and stronger, forest
initiatives;
* FAVORING COMMERCIAL TRADE INTERESTS
will be dominated and driven by powerful timber and commercial
trade interests, and fail to address the predatory and
unethical behavior of an increasing number of trans-national
industrial timber corporations;
* UNDERMINING THE BIODIVERSITY CONVENTION
will undermine the role of the historic Convention on
Biological Diversity and other existing, yet largely
unfulfilled, international and regional environmental
agreements and initiatives;
* AVOIDING THE REAL ISSUES
will ignore or avoid some of the world's most critical and
controversial forest problems, many of which lie outside the
traditional 'forest' sector, and will fail to effectively
address the chronic underlying causes of forest loss and
degradation;
* THREATENING CITIZEN INITIATIVES
will risk undermining important non-governmental initiatives
(e.g., the independent certification of forest management and
forest products), and could undermine the ability of
indigenous peoples and traditional rural communities to help
decide the fate of their own forests; and
* DELAYING DECISIVE ACTION
will stall or block action on a wide range of critical forest
problems during years of lengthy debate, negotiation, and
ratification -- a waste of scarce time and resources that
could be better applied to solving real forest problems and
implementing existing agreements.
Jean-Pierre Kiekens
Université Libre de Bruxelles &
Environmental Strategies Europe
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/4156/
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