Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 6 • Number 1 • 20th January 2006
Greenpeace: WTO “Chills” Measures to Conserve Forests
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Plans to liberalise trade in forest products as part of WTO non-agricultural market access (NAMA) negotiations need to be abandoned, Greenpeace demanded in a new report released on 11 December. “Trading Away Our Last Ancient Forests: The Threats to Forests from Trade Liberalisation Under the WTO”, a 2005 update to a 2001 paper, concludes that WTO rules on Technical Barriers to Trade, and ongoing negotiations on non-tariff barriers to trade (NTBs) as part of the NAMA negotiations, have a “chilling” effect that discourages governments and private actors from taking actions to conserve ancient forests. Trade bans on illegally logged timber and wood products, independent timber certification schemes, government procurement policies for sustainable timber, import/export bans, labelling requirements and sustainable forest management practices are all affected by fears that such measures could be deemed barriers to trade and WTO incompliant, Greenpeace argues. In addition, the report asserts that tariff reductions or elimination under the NAMA negotiations would make timber cheaper, and could consequently lead to increases in demand that will result in more pressure on forests, with potentially adverse impacts on forest resources. Gaps in governance and unsustainable forest management practices could be exacerbated by this liberalisation, according to the advocacy group, and the imperative to reduce the use of sustainability-supporting measures or ‘barriers to trade’ could lead to a reduction in controls to prevent illegal trade in forest products.
In related news, a recent WWF report entitled “Failing the Forests: Europe’s Illegal Timber Trade” urged the EU to adopt binding measures to prohibit the import of illegally harvested timber and forest products into the region. Forest Industries Intelligence Limited, an independent UK-based consultancy to the international forest products sector, sharply criticised the report. They alleged that the statistics and conclusions in the report fail to acknowledge a lack of agreement on the definition of illegal logging and the paucity of statistics on its extent.
The Greenpeace report is available at http://www.illegal-logging.info/papers/Tradingawayancientforests.pdf
The WWF report is available at http://www.illegal-logging.info/papers/fo_failingforests.pdf
The Forest Industries Intelligence review is available at http://www.illegal-logging.info/papers/wwfailingforestassessment.pdf
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