Forestry and Development E-News: April 2009
Forestry and Development (F&D) is an online resource on sustainable forestry. It supports commercial forestry as a viable source of economic growth which is compatible with sustainability.
G20 commitment to avoid trade barriers ignored on timber trade April 2009: As part of the global strategy to manage the global recession, G20 leaders have twice called on all countries to avoid erecting trade barriers. When it comes to timber and tropical products, it appears Western authorities are ignoring this. The European Parliament has voted to require those who market timber and timber products within the EU to prove its legality. The EU does not require producers in EU countries to prove other products are legally produced before they may be traded among EU members. This is a back-door way to restrict imports of timber from tropical countries and is the result of years of lobbying by Green NGOs, such as WWF and Greenpeace, to use trade bans to stop illegal logging. This measure is likely to harm smaller family forestry businesses in Northern Europe who will have to incur the cost of applying chain-of-custody verification systems which are totally unnecessary since there is no question forestry in these enterprises is conducted legally. In similar vein, the European Council adopted a Directive last December to enact the EU policy of deriving 20 per cent of energy from renewable resources. Palm oil is a good renewable fuel and cheaper than vegetable oils produced in Europe. But the Directive will restrict imports unless EU forestry standards are followed by exporters in developing countries. This is another back-door way of using trade controls to force changes in forestry policy. Governments in those areas have warned they will challenge the EU measures in the World Trade Organization. Greens in the US have had plant species added to the Lacey Act which outlaws possession in the US of fauna endangered or controlled in foreign countries. This will enable US authorities to charge anyone possessing any product containing any element of a protected plant. Since plant fibres are used in many products, this will restrict trade because this assurance will be expensive to demonstrate. That is precisely the intent of key anti-forestry backers of the measure. The same Green groups are pressuring the Australian and New Zealand Governments to adopt similar measures on imports from PNG, Indonesia and Malaysia. The claim is these trade bans will pressure developing countries to control illegal logging. A recent report on Forestry and Sustainability by World Growth, a free market NGO (report available here), points out that the extent of illegal logging is considerably exaggerated and that trade bans rarely work. A more effective approach is to encourage forest businesses and governments in developing countries to promote sustainable forestry and to employ private-sector systems to demonstrate legality, such as those developed by SGS in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Some Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) schemes also provide verification of the legality of sources of timber.
UNFCCC approach to forestry improving April 2009: While the recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks in Bonn, Germany, revealed that among industrialized nations there has still been very little progress on recognizing the full role forestry can play as a low-cost means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, at least there is a move away from the Greenpeace and WWF position that the Climate Change Convention should be used as an anti-forestry tool. The REDD (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) concept has now been extended to REDD-plus - meaning REDD plus Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) and conservation. Forested developing countries, led by Indonesia and Brazil, have been insisting REDD must include assistance for promoting SFM. Unreconstructed, anti-forestry NGOs are lauding the fresh prominence given to conservation. Australia has also tabled a proposal that when carbon sequestration by forestry is measured, the continuing storage of carbon in timber and paper products should be recognized. World Growth has estimated that using this measure would probably double the rated value of Europe's forests as carbon sinks. WWF and Greenpeace can be expected to oppose this. They have consistently opposed full recognition of forests as carbon sinks. World Bank supports SFM Forestry in Brazil March 2009: The World Bank has issued a US$ 1.3 billion loan to Brazil. The loan provides for sustainable harvesting and management within natural forests, and for SFM certification of that forestry. The likely candidate is CERFLOR, a national SFM system developed in Brazil and recognized by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes (PEFC). The loan also recognizes that forestry in natural forests will continue in Brazil, with the Government committing to reduce, but not cease, the rate of deforestation. The World Bank report points out that 80 per cent of the Amazon rainforest remains intact. This loan is a welcome departure from the policy straightjacket which the Alliance with WWF on forestry imposed on World Bank forest policy. Alliance policy opposes any conversion of forest to non-forest purposes or forestry in large-scale forests. This policy has effectively prevented the World Bank from funding SFM in tropical forest economies. The loan provided to Brazil is a welcome development. Will the Bank apply similar approaches in Indonesia and PNG, where, until now its primary focus has been on conservation? In the case of PNG, the Bank still insists on giving credence to unsupportable claims by Greenpeace and WWF that most forestry in PNG is illegal, when it clearly is not. PNG's problem is that it is not as large as Brazil and cannot take out the large loans that the Bank requires to stay in business. FAO and Finland support SFM March 2009: Similarly, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Finland have signed a four-year, EUR14 million partnership titled "Sustainable Forest Management in a Changing Climate". The partnership will seek to improve forest data collection and analysis as well as management skills for sustainable forest management in "selected developing countries". The aim of the programme is to assist developing countries to protect their forest resources, build sustainable forest livelihoods and provide governments with the knowledge to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Between three and six countries will be selected to pilot the programme.	Preparing for carbon credits in PNG April 2009: The PNG Office of Climate Change has initiated work to establish a basis for generating carbon credits in PNG. This was originally sponsored by the World Bank and Finland in the expectation that the UNFCCC negotiations would result in agreement on a global system for emissions trading. It is now accepted that the Copenhagen Climate Change conference in December will not settle on a new global agreement, but simply lay down a framework. A final agreement is several years away. There is also little prospect there will be global emissions trading in any such agreement. China and India have made it clear they will not support a global system to cap and trade emissions of carbon dioxide. The only buyers of any PNG credits would then be the EU, or Australia if it establishes a scheme, the starting date of which has now been put off until 2011. Greenpeace is arguing that timber kept in the ground is more valuable for carbon credits than harvesting and forest regrowth for subsequent harvesting. Research on the prospective value of credits is slim. Exploratory work in Indonesia suggests the real value of carbon credits from forestry is very low. If that is correct, the Greenpeace strategy would reduce the economic benefits PNG derives from commercial forestry. FSC under attack from the inside - again March 2009: Greenpeace Nordic has published a report which claims that FSC-certified Swedish timber may have been sourced from Sweden's high conservation value forests (HCVFs). The report states that "the loss of Sweden's old-growth forests" demonstrates that the FSC system is "flawed nationally". Greenpeace claims that its report reveals a "web of complicity" in respect of the "continued logging of threatened old-growth forests" between the FSC, companies that are knowingly destroying threatened HCVFs, accredited certification bodies and the Accreditation Services International (ASI), which delivers accreditation and other services to the FSC. Greenpeace's "pro-Old Growth" strategy is a screen for its opposition to all commercial forestry. There is no inherent environmental value in "Old Growth" trees. The appropriate conservation strategy is to ensure representative and sustainable strands of species and related biodiversities are set aside in conservation areas and then to practice sustainable forest management in plantations and natural forests. Criticisms of FSC by Greenpeace continue to demonstrate the political risk for forest businesses which expect that membership of WWF-sponsored FSC will enable them to gain credit for practising sustainable forestry when Greenpeace, a member of FSC is saying it will not. The odd thing is that it is difficult to find criticism by WWF of Greenpeace's continuing attacks around the world on FSC. Also on Forestry and Development News > About F&D > Contact Us >
You have permission to forward this email newsletter to other interested persons provided it is passed on in its entirety. Forestry & Development E-News is published monthly by ITS Global (http://www.itsglobal.net). ITS Global are accredited assessors for the International Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes (PEFC) Questions and feedback can be sent to forestrydevel@bigpond.com If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter, please click here. © 2009. All rights reserved | Forestry & Development Website | Contact |