Draft European Communities (Definition of Treaties), 2006 International Tropical Timber Agreement, Order 2008
House of Commons Committee, 17th November 2008
Mr. Simon Burns (West Chelmsford) (Con): May I say what a pleasure it is to take part in considering this order under your chairmanship, Mr. Amess? Winston Churchill once said that it is better to do something than to do nothing while waiting to do everything, and it is with that mindset that I approach the order today. The sustainable management of the world’s tropical forests should be seen as critical in fighting climate change, protecting the earth’s biodiversity and helping to achieve the millennium development goals.
It is 20 years since the first tropical timber agreement was concluded, yet unsustainable forest management and illegal logging continue to be widespread. The OECD estimates that year on year an area of tropical forest the size of Greece is lost. A report by the European Union on the 2006 ITTA suggests that almost half of all logging activities in regions such as the Amazon, Russia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are illegal. It is also suggested that less than 5 per cent. of all tropical forests are sustainably managed. I would have hoped that after 20 years the global community could have made deeper inroads into those depressing statistics.
The 2006 ITTA demonstrates the difficulties of trying to match north and south aims and objectives into one agreement. It is my contention that the 2006 ITTA attempts to balance the wishes of the developing countries to strengthen their opportunities to trade a natural resource that they have in abundance with the west’s desire to strengthen sustainable management of tropical forests and to reduce illegal logging.
For evidence one need look no further than the method by which a member nation’s voting power on the International Tropical Timber Council, the governing body of ITTO is calculated. More votes are attributed to producer nations that export the most tropical timber and to consumer nations that import more tropical timber. At no point in this process is a producer nation’s level of sustainable management of tropical forests or the level of ethical importing by consumer nations taken into account.
Along with my hon. Friends I believe that improving the economy of less developed countries is crucial to lifting people out of poverty. However, the era of irresponsible capitalism is dead and it is time that we promoted sustainable capitalism. Sustainable logging from sustainable forests can play a vital part in diversifying less developed nations’ economies and in turn help lift their citizens out of poverty. That should, however, not be done at the expense of indigenous people who are dependent on tropical forests—40 million in the DRC alone—and the forest ecosystems that could provide opportunities for eco-tourism, and the opportunity for mankind to reverse the damage we have caused to the earth’s climate.
Illegal and unsustainable logging robs developing nations of much needed revenue, sometimes much more than those nations receive in development aid. It also perpetuates further marginalisation of indigenous peoples such as the Kenyah peoples of Malaysia who have suffered from the impacts of illegal logging by the Samling Timber Company. They have actively started campaigning against the logging but the Malaysian Government’s response was to send police with arrest warrants to the site to arrest any people disturbing the loggers.
History has shown that the control of large geographical areas of forest for logging has been the reason for wars or sustained conflict in Africa. Unlike mining, logging takes little initial investment to produce very large short-term profits. Wars in the DRC, Ivory Coast and the Central African Republic can be attributed to the fight for control of natural resources, of which timber is one.
I congratulate the European Union on the steps that it has taken to stamp out the importing of illegal tropical timber into member nations. The voluntary partnership agreements under the forest law enforcement, governance and trade programme should be championed but it should also be understood that these form just a small part of solving a much larger problem. If we are serious about fighting climate change, defending the rights of indigenous peoples and helping the development of less economically developed countries, international agreements such as the one we are discussing today must put sustainability at the heart of the institutions they are creating, or in this case building upon. Despite the rhetoric of the objectives of the 2006 ITTA, until power on the ITTC is also derived from sustainability, the impact of unsustainable logging and illegal logging will not change as fast as we want or the world needs.
The 2006 ITTA does little to address the problems to the global environment or to the development of LEDCs caused by unsustainable or illegal logging. Until the ITTO puts sustainability and protection of tropical forests ahead of short-term profits, the aims of the millennium development goals will continue to be difficult to achieve. Despite our good intentions, millennium development goal 7—ensuring environmental sustainability—will not be achievable while the demand for illegal or unsustainable timber from consumer Governments is higher than their desire for ethical and sustainable timber.
Despite the fundamental flaws in the ITTC and the ITTO, good work has been sanctioned and funded. One example is the recently funded project to be carried out by the ITTC that was announced in Ghana during the meeting on the operational modalities of the future work of the ITTC in June this year. Another is the forest seeds management and conservation project to be carried out in Cote d’Ivoire, which aims to research the viability of creating a seed centre to be used for the long-term reforestation of areas of land decimated by over-agricultural activity. There is also the project in Ghana that will study new ways to enhance forest law enforcement.
Improvements to the 2006 ITTA as regards governance, poverty reduction and livelihoods is also warmly welcomed. I understand from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s memorandum on the agreement that we have in no small part to thank it for its involvement in promoting these causes. Conservative Members also warmly welcome the UK’s voluntary financial contributions to the thematic programmes sub-account of around £70,000 per annum.
Without proper funding, the ITTO would struggle to carry out some of the good projects that I outlined earlier. Despite that, the ITTA does not go far enough in rebalancing the demand for more timber importing and the importance of sustainable environmental policy. While I do not believe that the 2006 ITTA has moved the ITTO or the ITTC far enough forward, something is better than nothing. I only hope that the next ITTA vastly advances our ability to truly promote sustainable forestry and logging.
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