TROPICAL TIMBER NEGOTIATIONS TO RESUME IN JUNE

6:23 AM Apr 19, 1993

TROPICAL TIMBER NEGOTIATIONS TO RESUME IN JUNE
Geneva 17 Apr (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The UN Conference for Negotiations of a successor agreement to the International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA) 1983 adjourned Friday with a procedural decision to reconvene from 21 to 25 June and, perhaps, another session later in the year.

Despite two earlier meetings of the International Tropical Timber Council (ITTC) and exchange of views there and tabling of draft proposals by the producers and consumers, with the two sides very sharply divided on some basic issues the four day meeting ended in effect with only a detailed exchange of views.

In adopting a procedural decision to continue with the negotiations at future meetings, even the normal language used on such occasions, namely,to note "progress" in the negotiations had to be omitted.

Brazil had objected to the claims of progress and, to the ill-disguised unhappiness of the consumers led by the United States, the resolution had to be suitably amended before it could be adopted.

To satisfy the consumers, the amended resolution affirmed the conference's desire "to achieve" a successor agreement rather than the language, in the draft text, of "to continue to negotiate".

The UNCTAD Secretary-General in cooperation with the ITTO Executive Director was asked to prepare a composite text of a draft successor agreement on the basis of the separate texts of proposals by producer and consumer groups. Knocked out of the text (also at instance of Brazil) was phraseology that the Chairman of the Conference and the Spokesmen of the Producer and Consumer groups should be consulted.

The Conference Chairman, Wisber Loeis of Indonesia, in his concluding remarks spoke of producers and consumers having had a "vigorous dialogue and exchange of views" for the first time and generating "a healthy and instructive atmosphere of reflection and impulse for cooperative negotiation."

"I would like to believe," he added, "that we have made some progress. We need to focus our thinking on the spirit of a successor Agreement onto its very letter and fine print..It might have been desirable even at this stage of our proceedings to have agreed on a unified text, however bracketed its component paragraphs...For the present I would ask all delegations to return to their capitals for consultations with their governments and, if possible with other interested governments to explore areas of consensus."

The Council of the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) is due to hold its 14th session in Kuala Lumpur from 11-19 May which might provide an opportunity to producers and consumers to have further discussions in the Council itself or on its sidelines.

Earlier, Milton Drucker of the United States, speaking for the consumers, said the producers and consumers had entered into the debate necessary to begin the negotiations and hoped at the Kuala Lumpur meeting of the ITTC would result in setting up a drafting group.

For his part, the producer spokesman, Amha Buang of Malaysia, said the discussions had helped to identify areas where views are similar and non-divergent and the areas of divergence. The producers had participated inn the debate actively and constructively and had provided the rationale of their proposals for a successor agreement including extending the scope of the agreement.

According to Amha, the points of divergence were:

* the scope of the agreement -- whether it should be confined to tropical timber only or cover all international timber trade;

* trade discrimination and conditionalities (whether on basis of socalled sustainability of harvesting trees in the forests or 'human rights of forest dwellers') having a restrictive effect on the marketing of timber;

* year 2000 target for sustainable use of forests -- whether it is a indicative target and a process or a provision in the agreement with requirements from producers to report on progress;

* financing by ITTA of the R and D projects -- over its seven year life only projects for a total of $66 million dollars have been financed by consumer contributions whereas the amount estimated for securing sustainable development of forests has been estimated for Agenda 21 purposes as 2.5 billion a year; and

* institutional questions about the functioning of the ITTO

In a press statement after the meeting, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said it was "outraged" by the lack of urgency demonstrated at the renegotiations in dealing with the pressing problems facing the world's forests and that no concrete progress had been made.

"The consumers," Chris Elliot, Senior Forest Officer for WWF said, "continue to believe that their forest practices are beyond international scrutiny...Canada and Japan, clearly under pressure from their domestic timber industries, even made veiled threats about leaving the ITTO if temperate timber is included in the new agreement".

Elliot also blamed the producers for refusing to accept the Target 2000 (now set as a non-legally binding target by a resolution of the ITTO Council) as a specific provision in the new agreement.

Such a target, WWF said, should be included in the new agreement but cover all timbers. This was the first international agreement dealing with forests to be negotiated after UNCED where all countries agreed to take a global approach to forests.

"It is therefore only logical and fair that the new agreement should cover all timbers," Elliott said.

In its speech in the plenary earlier in the week, Canada in explaining its opposition to extending the scope of the agreement, said that no matter what the outcome of the ITTA renegotiations, scrutiny of tropical producers by the environmental community would continue in future, but that the scrutiny of forest practices was by no means unique or even proportionately more prevalent for tropical producers than for temperate and boreal producer countries.

The "greening of the market" was happening for everybody and Canada viewed the renegotiation of ITTA very much in relation to the "Global forest dialogue", ensure a global consensus covering "all forest values" and viewing forests as "integrated eco-system". An agreement based on a single value, timber, was not acceptable to Canada.

Producer sources said that in the discussions at the current session, Canada and other consumers in opposing the move for bringing all timbers within the scope of the agreement, argued that in such an event all aspects of forests covered in the Rio documents -- forest principles, Agenda 21 etc -- should be incorporated into the agreement laying down clear obligations on producers.

This view was rejected by the producers who said that the negotiations and the successor agreement could only be a commodity agreement and relate only to commodity trade provisions.