WORLD FORESTS COMMISSION TO MEET 2-8 MARCH IN JAKARTA

22 February 1996

Press Release
ENV/DEV/344

WORLD FORESTS COMMISSION TO MEET 2-8 MARCH IN JAKARTA

19960222 GENEVA, 20 February (UN Information Service) -- The World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development, an independent non-governmental organization established following the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio and which works closely with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Forests, will hold the first of a series of public hearings in Jakarta, Indonesia, from 2 to 8 March.

Some 200 participants, mainly from Asia and representing all possible interest groups with a stake in the future of the world's forests, will try to hammer out a common policy for sustainable and equitable use and management of forests. The participants represent a broad range of experiences and interests, from poor cultivators to big logging companies, as well as scientists, environmental advocacy groups and governmental officials. There will be preparatory panels, and working groups and public hearings.

The 22 independent Commissioners from different geographic regions and with varied experiences in science, policy, advocacy, and law, are working towards formulating policy consensus on the management of world forests. They hope to accomplish that by participating in regional hearings, where they will have an opportunity to interact with all those who have a stake in the future of the world's forests.

The Commission is to submit a report to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Forests in 1997. There is complementarity between the two, in that the Panel is a negotiating body, while the Commission is an independent think-tank. The Commission has received financial support from the Governments of Sweden, Holland, Norway, United States, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, Korea and Indonesia. Financial support has also been provided by the Asian and Interamerican Development Banks, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and private foundations.

One of the Commission's two Co-chairmen, former Swedish Prime Minister Ola Ullsten, said he hopes that, in Jakarta, the various interest groups would explore common ground and from that, as well as from similar future gatherings in North and South America, Russia, Europe, and Africa, a vision could be built "of how one of the world's richest natural resources can be used to improve people's lives rather than being destroyed and creating misery for all of us".

His fellow Co-chairman, Emil Salim, a former long time Indonesian cabinet minister, a key player at the Rio Summit and the chief organizer of the Jakarta meeting fills in:

"There is time to move the tropical forest debate from rhetoric to action. Indonesia has shown the way by being the first to introduce "timber eco labelling" that aims to ensure that all marketed forest products are derived from forests that are under sustainable management. We have carefully designed the Jakarta meeting to provide a forum for dialogue, rather than a show for sloganeering."

The Commission held its first meeting in June 1995. At that meeting, it agreed to give special attention to mechanisms for achieving policy reforms and scientific research that will enhance the prospects for sustainable and equitable use of forests and preserve the important contribution they make to global environmental stability. It agreed to a strategy for achieving that objective through a series of regional hearings in both the North and South, modeled after those held by the Brundtland Commission. To underpin its work, the Commission has established a Science Council and Policy Advisory Group of eminent scientists and policy researchers.

Following that meeting, the Commission concluded that many of the underlying causes of escalating forest destruction are the consequence of a combination of inappropriate national government land use and economic policies. Those have contributed to skewed land distribution and accelerated migration of the rural poor into marginal forest lands and have excluded local communities from involvement in forest management. Forest industrialization policies which have heavily and unnecessarily subsidized powerful logging interests, have provided little or no incentive for the private sector to reinvest timber profits in sustainable forest management.

As described by the Commission's Secretary-General, John Spears, "These are not problems that can be solved by foresters alone. What is needed is political commitment at the highest level to bring about currently unpopular policy reforms. Inevitably these will hurt some more powerful vested interests. But they will be of inestimable benefit to the poorer people of the South, to sustainable world economic growth and to preservation of our global environment".

The Commission believes that progress in implementation of the Rio Summit recommendations for sustainable and more equitable use of global forests could be accelerated, if there existed more effective institutional mechanisms for reconciling the sharply different perceptions about the role of the forests; commitment by national governments to a number of key institutional reforms that could make a decisive contribution to alleviation of poverty among forest dependent communities, to restoration of health and productivity of temperate and boreal forests and to slowing the current rate

- 3 - Press Release ENV/DEV/344 22 February 1996

of tropical deforestation; and more rigorous application of scientific research in the formulation of forest development and conservation strategies and strengthening of collaborative research, aimed at improved understanding of the important role that forests play in contributing to global environmental stability.

Asia's forests, which contain the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth, sustain the livelihood of millions of people in the region, as well as supply the world with innumerable medicinal and other benefits. They play a key role in absorbing carbon emissions and slowing global warming. Thus far, the question of how to simultaneously combine continued harvesting of timber with protection of the interests of forest dwelling communities and preservation of the global environmental benefits has proven elusive.

The numerous recommendations that have emerged from past initiatives have failed to stem deforestation in the region, which is currently running at some 4 million hectares a year. Furthermore, such initiatives have done little to contain the "mining" of the more valuable timber species in the region, which account for more than 80 per cent of the world's tropical timber trade. With an anticipated doubling of the region's population between now and the middle of the twenty-first century and a rapidly shrinking forest resource, the prospects are grim for meeting the essential needs of the region's 500 million people who live in absolute poverty.

Despite those daunting problems, however, the Commission remains convinced that the situation can be redressed. Many of the essential policy reforms and institutional changes have long been well known and their justification thoroughly researched. The discussions in Jakarta will be mainly concerned with the political problem of how to ensure that essential policy reforms were rapidly put in place.

* *** *