Fern
IFF Special Report
Time
for focus on action at the UNFF
At 6 am on Saturday 12th
February, after two weeks of discussion at the final meeting of the Intergovernmental
Forum on Forests (IFF), tired delegates finally agreed on a text that would
pave the way for future work on forests at a global level.
The major outcomes are threefold: the creation of a new body the United
Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF); an enhanced Interagency task Force on Forests,
renamed a Partnership on Forests (PoF) and a continuation of the secretariat
of the IFF which will become the secretariat of the UNFF.
The creation of the UNFF was a significant compromise for all
participants including those who have during the coarse of the IPF/ IFF
process pursued a legally binding forest convention (FW 39, 37), and those
governments and NGOs who's efforts have been focused on achieving a result
that would focus on the implementation of existing agreements. It was
also a significant compromise for some member countries of the EU, who spoke
with one voice throughout the negotiations despite increasing divergences in
opinion between the Member States (see FW 40).
The outcome of the IFF4 will be presented to the CSD at its eighth
session (April 25-May 5th). It is unlikely however in the 60 minutes
timetabled for discussion on forests at this meeting, that much further
progress can be made on deciding the UNFF's position within the UN system,
or indeed its exact programme of work. It is likely that a decision on where
the UNFF will be placed in the UN system will not be taken until the meeting
of the Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC) in July or the General
Assembly (GA) in November.
For NGOs as well as many EU governments, it is imperative that the UNFF,
which will meet annually for a period of two weeks, prioritises its mandate
of facilitating the implementation and monitoring of existing agreements. A
clear separation is therefore necessary between the functions of further
dialogue/co-ordination on the one hand and monitoring /implementation on the
other. NGOs have called for a pre-meeting to look closely at the methods,
process and conditionalities to set up an effective monitoring and
implementation programme by the UNFF.
The IFF
text proposes that the UNFF keeps open the option of revisiting the
convention debate within the next 5 years. Many NGOs and governments feel
that this is exactly the type of discussion that has hindered progress on
implementation throughout the IFF process. It is feared that a continuation
of this debate would mean less effective action will be taken by the UNFF.
Underlying
Causes and Trade
The final
report to the CSD on other issues
has largely clean text, which means that significant progress has been made
during the coarse of the IFF process towards achieving consensus and further
exploring issues. A number of the action proposals of the NGO led Underlying
Causes process (FW 23, 31) were adopted in the final text of the IFF.
In the Trade discussions one of the major sticking points was in
the proposal to support to continued efforts by countries towards trade
liberalisation. The EU pursued the traditional tariff and non-tariff measures
(NTM) liberalisation dogma, which conforms with their proposed text at Seattle.
It is disappointing they did not mention the need for Sustainability Impact
Assessment on forest resources, which many NGOs continue to call for.
The final agreed text supports continued efforts by countries and the WTO
toward trade liberalisation, giving special attention to removing remaining
and emerging trade restrictions that constrain market access, particularly
for value added forest products. This text also urges that cooperative work
on voluntary certification and/or labelling schemes be undertaken, while
seeking to enhance comparability and considering their equivalence to ensure
adequate transparency and non- discrimination in their design and operation.
It also states that such schemes should not lead to unjustifiable obstacles
to market access.
IPF Monitoring
Project Update
At a
side event at the final session of the IFF, NGOs launched a draft of their
Global report ‘Keeping the Promise’ an ambitious project aimed at
researching the efforts undertaken in 20 countries to implement the IPF
proposals for action, committed to by governments and endorsed by a
resolution at the UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) in June 1997
(see FW 40). The draft report provoked significant dialogue in the corridors
and a couple of references by governments in plenary. It also gave
governments and NGOs a chance to engage in discussion and exchange ideas on
the successes and failures of implementing of this ‘soft law’ commitment
at a national level.
Although the reaction to some of the country reports was negative, many
governments were complementary about the value of monitoring and evaluation
on existing commitments.
As well as coordinating the European part of the global report, Fern
undertook a study of EU member states activities and this draft report
gives a good initial picture of the current state of implementation:
·
Almost all governments
make clear in their responses to the study questionnaire
used for this report that improving the national forest situation, both
by extending the forest area and by improving the biological and social
quality of the forests, is important. Furthermore, governments have in recent
years taken considerable action to improve, revise or draft National Forest
Plans (NFPs), often in a participatory manner.
·
Full and effective implementation of the IPF's Proposals for
Action has been neglected by many countries. Although the IPF's Proposals for Action have prompted a few governments
to inspect their forest policies further, particularly the governments involved
in the ‘Six- Country Initiative’
(the UK, Germany and Finland), in most cases governments said that progress
in forest management would have proceeded anyway as the train had been set
in motion at Rio.
·
This should not be an excuse to discard the Proposals for
Action as being of little relevance. The results of the study show that very
few countries have systematically identified gaps between their own forest
policies and the IPF's proposals. A closer look at the IPF's Proposals for
Action could actually ensure that many more of the direct and underlying
causes affecting Europe's forests are addressed. Many of these are currently
being overlooked. Some of the wider issues addressed by the IPF - including
air pollution, underlying causes, trade and consumption, and internalising
externalities - are hardly being tackled. None of the governments has in its
answer addressed the full range of issues raised by the IPF proposals.
·
There is a lack of
acknowledgement of the problems of forest degradation and deforestation
in Europe. Indeed, one member state stated that the commitments of the IPF
are mainly involving programmes of assistance of developed countries towards
developing countries and less relevant to their national situation. They
go on to say, ‘deforestation in general does not involve European countries
and does certainly not occur in this country,’ and note the importance
of the Pan- European process for the identification of specific topics inside
the largest commitments proposed by the IPF. This answer suggests a lack
of understanding about the function of the IPF's proposals. It is interesting
to note here that as a result of the underlying causes initiative (see first
page) the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) extended its
underlying causes report to include all types of forests (it had previously
only included tropical forests). A
number of recent studies
have shown, that although the area of forest in most European countries
has increased, the quality of most forests has declined sharply through
deterioration of forest health and biodiversity loss. At the same time,
valuable forest areas are being logged or destroyed for infra-structure
projects.
·
In Europe, land use and tenure regimes have had a powerful
influence on the way European forests have been managed or destroyed.
The IPF puts a strong emphasis on the establishment of appropriate participatory
mechanisms to involve all interested parties in policy development. Happily
most governments stated in their reports that the process for the development
of their National Forest Plans has been a fully participatory one - in most
cases including forest owners, environmental NGOs, industry and research
institutes. The fact that many NGOs working at a national level did not
even know of the existence of IPF recommendations is a sign that there is
still work to do in establishing effective mechanisms for awareness raising
in policy making and its implementation at a national level.
·
Finally, the study shows that not enough is being done to
formally co-ordinate and evaluate the efforts of the different sectoral
activities covered in the IPF's Proposals for Action. If and how
co-ordination between different ministries involved could take place remains
unclear in almost all cases. None of the governments questioned made
reference to trade issues in their response, a few made a limited reference
to aid. This lack of coordination probably explains why the IPF's Proposals
relating to these issues were not properly addressed in the governments’
responses to our study questionnaire.
Fern
will be receiving government and NGO comments on the draft European report
in the coming weeks, and the final report will be published and launched at
the UNCSD in April.