Clock ticks on forest crisis

Article for The Courier, by Saskia Ozinga (April 2000)

In New York, on Friday 11 February, the last day of negotiations at the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF) began. Talks continued throughout the day and into the night as one by one or in small groups, delegates were called into side rooms to broker a joint agreement. Finally, the next morning, as the clock ticked seven o'clock, an agreement was reached. The four-year-long process that could have contributed to solving the world's forest crisis was over.

In the final stages of the IFF, NGOs were denied the opportunity to speak. Indigenous people's organisations walked out of the meeting in protest. At midnight most NGOs including Fern's own representative left, feeling excluded from the debate that had deteriorated to backroom deal cutting, with little reference to the forest crisis. Only one NGO representative was present to witness the IFF's last minutes.

Time is also running out for the forests and its people. Every day several species disappear. 10% of the world's tree species faces extinction[i]. The IFF had a chance to reverse the trend of disappearing forests, but it did not take it. Since the end of the negotiations NGOs like Fern have expressed their disappointment at the outcome of IFF and identified the key cause for its failure: a lack of political will to address the direct and underlying causes of forest loss.

A descendant of the Rio Earth Summit via the Commission on Sustainable Development and the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF), the IFF inherited the aim of combating deforestation and promoting sustainable development of forests. Specifically, the Forum's priority was to promote and facilitate the implementation of 130 Proposals for Action identified by IPF[ii]. These Proposals for Action, endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly, are effectively a form of 'soft law'. Secondary mandates for the IFF were to "consider matters left pending"[iii] from IPF and to consider "international arrangements and mechanisms to promote the management and conservation of forests"[iv].  But it was this latter mandate that hijacked the IFF process while the implementation of the vital Proposals for Action was neglected.

The debate on a forest convention

Along with Fern, the majority of NGOs, including Greenpeace, WWF, Friends of the Earth and the World Rainforest Movement, have been against a premature forest convention for a number of reasons[v]. This might seem surprising as in most cases NGOs advocate better legal arrangements. But the forest debate is a highly political debate that links in with discussions on trade, land use and land rights. 

Fern and other NGOs believe that to halt the crisis facing the world's forests the two main issues that need addressing are trade regulation -including illegal logging-, and land rights issues -including more equal division of land and resources-. These key issues have no chance of being incorporated into a forest convention or any other legally binding instrument. Trapped between the insistence on national sovereignty over forests, on the one hand, and international legal obstacles to any non-tariff or tariff barriers to trade in forest products, on the other hand, there is little scope for a convention to establish meaningful and binding commitments. Instead, a forest convention would be more likely to develop criteria for sustainable forest management. Fern fears that these criteria would soon be reduced to the lowest common denominator, thereby threatening existing standard setting and certification processes. Furthermore a forest convention would held up ongoing forest negotiations in other fora, including the Convention on Biological Diversity.

IFF is dead, long live the UNFF.

Now that the IFF is over, what lies ahead? The main outcome of the IFF was to recommend to the eighth meeting of the Commission on Sustainable Development  (CSD8) the setting up of a UN Forum on Forests (UNFF), with a similar mandate to the IFF.  The disappointment NGOs feel at this outcome is not related to the creation of the UNFF per se, but to its terms of reference. Or, more specifically, with its lack of focus on action.

Fern believes that if the IFF had used its opportunity to implement the IPF Proposals for Action, which was its first mandate, the Forum could have contributed to an improvement in the forest situation world-wide. Now that the UNFF's mandate is known, there is little evidence that action will be more forthcoming, although four years after the start of IFF, the need for action is certainly more urgent. Instead, the final text of the IFF IV has given most NGOs reason to fear more discussions on the pros and cons of a forest convention rather than on implementing the Proposals of Action. A spokesperson for Friends of the Earth commented:  "It is pathetic to see how foresters are re-establishing a mechanism that is proven not to work".[vi]

Anticipating the emergence of a forum like the UNFF, a large group of NGOs, including Fern, presented their criticisms of IFF at the penultimate IFF meeting:

"The IFF process has not led to action. It has been dominated by narrow economic interests, has used outdated procedures for major group participation and has often ignored or duplicated the work of existing agreements and initiatives such as the CBD. This type of process must not be continued".

The joint statement also listed six activities that any new mechanism should include to win the support of NGOs[vii]. These included:

·        focus on implementation of the IPF Proposals for Action at both national and international level;

·        create an effective international monitoring and reporting mechanism for such implementation

·        create enhanced means of participation for civil society and major groups in the intergovernmental process itself and in implementation processes at both national and international levels.

For the time being NGOs seriously doubt if the UNFF will adequately implement these demands in its programme of work. Nonetheless Fern, as well as many other NGOs, is determined to work constructively to encourage the UNFF will develop a working programme that does focus on the implementation of the Proposals for Action, as well as other commitments governments have made, many of which have not been implemented[viii]. There is a growing frustration among NGOs about the lack of real participation of NGOs and indigenous peoples organisations as well as a lack of commitment from many governments to implement the promises of Rio to allow proper participation of all 'Major Groups'.  Fern together with many NGOs will work hard towards CSD8 to ensure that once the UNFF has been created, it will be a fully participatory process, with a clear focus on implementation, and will not default with the same failures as IFF.

Three credibility tests for the UNFF

The first test of whether the UNFF will become a body that can contribute to tackling the forest crisis will be the next CSD meeting. It has not yet been decided where in the UN system the UNFF will be placed. For Fern it is clear that the UNFF should be placed under the CSD. There are three reasons for this: to allow as much participation as possible; to provide funds for developing countries to participate and to ensure that the forest debate does not turn into a pure forestry debate. If the UNFF would be placed elsewhere, i.e. higher in the UN system, it would be more difficult to meet these criteria.

The second test will be what the format of the UNFF meeting will look like. Unless the first week of the two week meeting is set aside for monitoring and reporting on the implementation of the commitments made, directly followed by clear recommendations to be received by Ministers, Fern does not believe the UNFF will be able to achieve greater results than the IFF.

Lastly for the UNFF to be truly effective it would need to be assisted by an expert committee to develop clear procedures for monitoring and reporting as well as the production of the country reports. The UNFF on its own would not be able to properly research and assess more than 5 to 10 country reports at each meeting, which would mean that it would take 15 years before a country would be assessed for a second time[ix].

Conclusions

The world’s forests are in crisis. According to official figures[x] 15,4 million hectares of tropical forests are disappearing every year, that is about 45 soccer fields every minute. Recent estimates by the governments of Indonesia and Brazil suggest that these figures give a far from accurate reflection of the extent of the forest crisis[xi]. In the Northern Hemisphere natural forests are being replaced with intensively managed plantations. In Europe, although with a forest cover of 36%[xii] the remnants of old growth forests are less than 1%[xiii]. Even these remnants are still being logged. It is therefore no exaggeration to state that the next ten years will be decisive for the future of the world’s forests.

What needs to be done to reverse the forest crisis? The IFF experience makes it clear that creating a forum on forests is not going to bring about the changes needed. A UNFF will only contribute to the changes needed, if it focuses on the implementation of commitments made. But more importantly, despite what many people working at the international level feel, the most concrete results in halting destructive logging or mining projects, promoting sustainable forest management and empowering local people are not happening at the international level but at the national and local level.

These are the initiatives which should be supported by the governments present in the IFF debate with policies, funds and moral support. An international process that not actively includes indigenous peoples and local communities and does not allow Major Groups, including NGOs, to fully participate does not do right to the text and the spirit of the Rio meeting and will not contribute to reversing the forest crisis.

Saskia Ozinga is director of Fern, an NGO working at the EU level to achieve the conservation and sustainable management of forests; respect for the rights of forest peoples; and greater transparency in EC aid to tropical forest countries.