Deforestation:

An Overview of Global Programs and Agreements

92-764

CONTENTS FOR THIS SECTION

THE INTERNATIONAL TROPICAL TIMBER ORGANIZATION
Background
-- Origins of the ITTA
-- Objectives of the ITTO
-- Structure
-- Membership and Voting
-- The Council
-- Committees
-- Participation
-- Projects
-- Finances
Progress to Date
-- Target 2000
-- Guidelines for Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests
-- Projects and Studies
-- Sarawak Mission
Renegotiating the ITTA
Possibilities for Reform
The Relationship Between the ITTO and the TFAP

THE INTERNATIONAL TROPICAL TIMBER ORGANIZATION

The International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) was not originally designed to address deforestation per se. Rather, the organization was designed to facilitate trade in tropical timber. Yet timber extraction, especially for export, is much less of a factor in deforestation than the clearing of forest for other purposes -- such as ranching, food crops, and development projects such as hydropower. Moreover, only a small proportion of timber extracted is actually traded. Most is consumed domestically, often as firewood or charcoal. In fact, the volume of tropical timber exported represents only about five percent of all trees removed from tropical forests. (19) Thus, as a mechanism for addressing tropical deforestation, the sphere of influence of the ITTO, relative to some other global mechanisms, is fairly limited.

Yet the International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA) -- which established the ITTO -- is the only commodity agreement dealing with the conservation and management of tropical forests; and, pending a global forest agreement, it remains the only binding international agreement concentrating on this subject. As such, the ITTO provides a unique forum for forest management policy discussion between producer and consumer countries, and has become a vehicle for project activities, especially those geared toward reforestation and conservation. Environmental NGOs in several countries have exerted extensive pressure, with considerable success, on the ITTO to focus on environmentally sustainable forest management and conservation.

These policy discussions have resulted in the adoption of the year 2000 target, by which time all timber traded internationally should come from sustainably managed sources, and the development of guidelines for natural forest management by the ITTO. However, concern about the ITTO's shortcomings is growing. Critics note a lack of evidence that the organization has generated improvements in forest management practices on the ground, and point out that social and environmental issues continue to be neglected by loggers and forest departments as well as by the ITTO itself.

The ITTA entered into force as of April 1985, with a duration of five years. It was extended twice, in 1990 and in 1992, for periods of two years each. It cannot be extended again, however, and by March 1994, the ITTA must be renegotiated or it will terminate.

Background

The ITTA was completed in 1983 and signed by both tropical timber producing and consuming nations. The ITTA, which sets out the purposes and constitution of the ITTO, is unique in several respects. The most recent commodity agreement to be negotiated at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the ITTA, like preceding agreements on coffee, sugar, cocoa and jutes aims to promote not only tropical timber trade, but, more importantly, to increase the producer-countries' share of the benefits.

In practice this means a strong emphasis on both expanding the volume and value of the trade in tropical timber, and ensuring that a greater share of the value is retained by the producers as earnings, profits, and government revenues. However, another dimension of the agreement makes it unique: a long-term concern is explicitly stated for the conservation of both the forest resource and the forest environment.

The ITTA established the ITTO, an intergovernmental organization set up in 1985 to implement the agreement by improving information about tropical timber trade and encouraging better management and use of tropical forests. The organization is intended mainly to facilitate trade in tropical timber. Unlike other intergovernmental commodity organizations, however, it does not intervene in international markets to ensure stable prices and supplies or otherwise function as a cartel. Neither does the ITTO have an operational capability. Rather, it relies on other existing organizations to implement research and development activities that it endorses.

Origins of the ITTA

The initial impetus behind ITTA's negotiation was not environmental but Western -- mainly Japanese -- concern for the threat posed by deforestation to sources of tropical timber supply. When the Japanese, the world's largest importer of tropical timber in terms of volume, originally proposed a resolution at UNCTAD to create an ITTO in 1977, they had in mind a commodity agreement of the sort adopted for jute and rubber, which would be strictly confined to trade considerations.

However, in discussions, it soon became clear that tropical timber could not be treated in such a narrowly defined manner. Since tropical timber comes from a wide variety of tree species growing over a vast area of the world's forests, it cannot be dealt with as a single commodity.(20) For this reason, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) forcefully argued that the agreement could not be limited to the technical and commercial concerns of timber extraction and trade, but must also provide for the ecological and genetic services provided by forests. As a result, in the final stages of several years of negotiations of the ITTA, the environmental role of tropical forests came to feature prominently and the final wording of the agreement included "sustainable utilization and conservation of tropical forests and their resources, and maintaining the ecological balance in the regions concerned" among the objectives of the ITTO.(21)

The ITTA, signed in November 1983 after six years of protracted negotiations, thus emerged as a unique trade agreement. Environmental NGOs welcomed the ITTO, perceiving that it offered an opportunity to enforce sustainable forest management. To the surprise of many governments, therefore, the ITTO became the principal focal point for debate between conservationists and timber-exporting countries over the management (or lack thereof) of their natural forests.

As soon as the ITTA had been signed, but before it entered into effect on April 1, 1985, a further political battle ensued regarding who should gain the influential role of Executive Director of the ITTO and where the Secretariat was to be seated. Regional groupings emerged in the negotiations, the two blocks of North and South themselves splitting, to a substantial extent, between East and West. Divided in this way, no group was able to secure the required two-thirds majority of votes to allow a definitive solution. Instead, the ITTO limped from one meeting place to another and the prospect of the ITTO actually getting down to work became increasingly remote.

The uncertainty ended in 1986 when the Japanese Government offered several million dollars to fund the ITTO, as well as free office space and support services, and, in addition, undertook to underwrite the costs of bi-annual Council meetings both in Yokohama and overseas. In exchange, the Japanese agreed to promote the appointment of a Malaysian forester to the post of Executive Director. On July 29, 1986, more than two and a half years after the adoption of the ITTA, and about one and a quarter years after it came into force, the Council accepted Yokohama, Japan as the Headquarters of the ITTO, and Dr. Freezailah bin Che Yeom, Deputy Director-General of the Forestry Department of Malaysia, as the first Executive Director.

As a result of its troubled beginnings, the case could be made that the ITTA has never really pleased either its consumer or producer parties. When it was drafted, the consumer countries were mainly looking for a policy to protect future timber supplies. The producers were more interested in a conduit for funding projects that would increase the benefits received from exporting timber. Inevitably, these would largely consist of adding value to timber exports by increasing the quality and the quantity of the producer countries' timber processing. This would, of course, subsidize competition for tropical timber processors in consumer countries. The result was a dual-function organization: a forum to debate policies (to be implemented nationally); and funding for projects. Producer-countries' presence at the table was always conditional on the ITTO being both a project processing and funding organization. Additional concern emerged in the mid-1980s when environmental organizations, mainly in industrialized consumer countries (excluding Japan) began major lobbying efforts for protection of tropical forests. They focused on the ITTO and began to urge trade-related incentives to halt deforestation and unsustainable timber harvesting practices.

Objectives of the ITTO

The primary stated mission of the ITTO, in carrying out its mandate as described by the ITTA, is to strike a balance between the needs of conservation and development and to secure more sustainable use of tropical forests and the resources they contain. Specifically, the ITTA is intended to promote cooperation, coordinate statistical data, and support research and development on marketing, utilization, reforestation, and management of tropical forests. As stated in the ITTA, the principal objectives of the organization are:

• -to provide an effective framework for cooperation between tropical timber producing and consuming member nations;
• -to promote the expansion and diversification of international trade in tropical timber and the improvement of structural conditions in the tropical timber market;
• -to promote and support research and development to improve forest management and wood utilization;
• -to improve market intelligence with a view to ensuring greater transparency in the international tropical timber market;
• -to encourage increased and further processing of tropical timber in producing member countries in order to increase their export earnings;
• -to encourage members to support and develop industrial tropical timber reforestation and forest management activities;
• -to improve marketing and distribution of tropical timber exports of the producing members; and
• -to encourage the development of national policies aimed at the sustainable utilization and conservation of tropical forests and their genetic resources, and at maintaining the ecological balance in the regions concerned.(22)

Although the objectives focus primarily on promoting and improving timber trade, the inclusion of conservation and management goals reflects the dual importance of tropical timber as both a commodity and a natural resource as well as the need to establish a pragmatic balance between conservation and utilization of tropical forests.(23) This concern is expressed clearly in the last objective cited above as well as in the Preamble to the agreement in which, among the other priorities identified, the parties recognized "...the importance of, and the need for, proper and effective conservation and development of tropical timber forests with the view to ensuring their optimum utilization while maintaining the ecological balance of regions concerned and of the biosphere...."(24)

Structure

The institutional structure of the ITTO is based on four main areas of work: (a) market intelligence; (b) reforestation and forest management; (c) increased and further processing in developing countries; and (d) research and development. It consists of a Council which establishes policy, three permanent technical Committees which operate as the Council's working arms, and a Secretariat. The Council is the highest authority of the organization and it is made up of representatives from all the Member States. The Permanent Committees of the organization and the Executive Director, who is the chief administrative officer of the organization as well as the head of its Secretariat, fall under the direction of the Council.

Membership and Voting

The agreement created two categories of membership in the ITTO: producing members and consuming members. A producing member is defined as any country with tropical forest resources and/or a net exporter of tropical timber. Consuming members include all other countries which wish to belong to the organization. The two categories of members are equally important in the organization; each category has 1,000 votes distributed among the members. Votes among producing members are determined by a combination of (1) equal regional shares, (2) tropical timber resources in the country, and (3) the value of tropical timber exports in the past three years. Each consuming member receives 10 votes, with the remainder distributed in proportion to the net volume of tropical timber imports in the past three years. (For more information, see CRS Report 87-795 ENR: Tropical Deforestation: The International Tropical Timber Agreement, p. 4.)

Membership in the ITTO currently includes 23 producing countries, which account for about 75 percent of the world's tropical forest resources; and 27 consuming countries (plus the European Economic Community), which account for 95 percent of the international trade in tropical wood products. Among producing members, Indonesia, Brazil, and Malaysia hold the largest number of votes, with each having about 13 percent of the 1,000 producing member votes. Japan is the largest consumer of tropical timber, and holds nearly a third of the consuming member votes. The United States holds about eight percent of consuming member votes, followed by France and Korea.

The Council

The ITTA is implemented by the International Tropical Timber Council, which consists of a representative of each member of the organization. The Council operates at the political level, setting policy and receiving and dealing with the recommendations of the Permanent Committees. Its function also includes coordinating the work of the Permanent Committees and carrying out the provisions of the agreement. The functions of the Permanent Committees, on the other hand, are generally at the technical level.

Committees

The ITTA establishes three Permanent Committees as the technical working arms of the Council for evaluating project proposals.

• -The Committee on Economic Information and Market Intelligence is to focus on projects for coordinating, compiling, and disseminating statistical data on international tropical timber trade.
• -The Committee on Reforestation and Forest Management is to encourage technical assistance for reforestation and forest management projects, identify funding sources for such projects, anticipate the future needs of international trade in tropical timber, facilitate the transfer of knowledge in the field of reforestation and forest management with the assistance of other development agencies, and coordinate these activities with those being pursued by other organizations such as the FAO and the World Bank.
• -The Committee on Forest Industry is to emphasize projects for technology transfer and product standardization and to encourage increased and further processing in developing countries.

Research and development is not addressed by a separate Permanent Committee since it is a common component of the activities of all three committees.

Participation

Participation in each of the Permanent Committees is open to all Member States. Members of the Permanent Committees are also members of the Council, the deciding authority. Some observers have pointed to representational problems within the ITTO, claiming that representatives have not been familiar with the issues or empowered by their national capitals to develop institutional momentum. In fact, many countries have sent delegations from the commodities division of their departments of trade to the ITTO Council meetings, but most have relied on locally posted Foreign Ministry representation. Until recently, delegations including forestry and development expertise have been rare.

In turn, ill-equipped or non-expert representation may have partially contributed to a resistance to fund an adequate Secretariat and the rejection of a proactive one. Critics claim that decisions over project proposals, often made without prior consideration or in-house evaluation, are based on political rather than technical grounds, that they duplicate the work of other organizations, and that they could be more economically funded and executed under other auspices.

Likewise, since project proposals are submitted to the organization by members, representational problems could result in serious inadequacies in project preparation and evaluation. Such a case would allow delegates the excuse they need not to contribute to project funds unless they suit their own limited objectives.

Projects

The ITTA has five categories for research and development projects: (1) wood utilization; (2) natural forest development; (3) reforestation development; (4) harvesting, logging infrastructure, or training of technical personnel; and (5) institutional framework and national planning. The proposals are reviewed, using criteria specified in the agreement, by one of the Permanent Committees, to determine if they are relevant, beneficial, and profitable to tropical timber trade. The Committees also consider whether proposals duplicate ongoing efforts. The reviewing Committee submits its recommendation to the Council, which then votes to approve or reject project financing. So far, the majority of ITTO projects (about 70 percent) have been in the area of reforestation and conservation -- a reflection of the priorities of donor nations.(25)

Finances

The Council has two financial accounts to carry out its mandate. The Administrative Account pays the expenses of administering the agreement. Members contribute to the Administrative Account in proportion to their votes. The Special Account pays for projects approved by the Council and for certain pre-project activities. Members are not required to contribute any funds to the Special Account. The funds come from the U.N. and the voluntary contributions of its members. The Council also assists in arranging private financing for approved projects.

The biggest contributor to the ITTO is Japan. With a contribution of $27 million for projects in 1990, ten times more than the second largest, the Japanese have been inhibited from larger-scale funding by the risk of exposure to charges of 'buying' the organization. In fact, many countries feel that Japan already has undue influence on the ITTO, due to the weighted voting structure of the agreement.

The knowledge that Japan holds such political power may have discouraged some major contributors, but this situation may be changing as donor nations gradually increase their contributions to the ITTO. The ITTO's total project budget for 1992 is $60 million. Of that sum, the U.S. contributed $1,000,000. Approximately $550,000 of this amount was earmarked for projects in all three main producing regions at the May 5-14, 1992 Council session in Cameroon. (The remainder of the funding was retained for earmarking at a future session.)

Progress to Date

As described in the Preamble of the ITTA, the first objective of the ITTO is to provide a framework for cooperation and consultation between producing and consuming members. The ITTO has achieved this aim; however, due to its troubled beginnings, the ITTO has moved slowly. On the whole, the ITTO's progress in addressing deforestation is a story of mixed success. Some of the most significant work of the ITTO is highlighted here.

Target 2000

At its Eighth Session, held in Bali in May 1990, the Council took a step toward achieving its goal of sustainable logging by announcing 'Target 2000' which establishes the year 2000 as the date when all trade in tropical timber is to be supplied from sustainably managed sources, though the ITTO has yet to agree on a definition of sustainability.

Many critics question the feasibility of reaching this goal since the ITTO's own studies indicate that sustained yield logging is practically nonexistent in the tropics. In addition, some observers note that the use of trade measures necessary to achieve this objective is at best inhibited and at worst ruled out under the terms of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).(26)

At the Tenth Session -- held in Quito, Ecuador in June 1991 -- the ITTO adopted a strategy to facilitate achieving Target 2000 through international collaboration and national policies and programs. Pursuant to the strategy, the Council encourages national plans to include the following elements:

• -forest conservation and management;
• -appropriate economic forest and timber policies (full cost forest accounting, resources pricing regimes, etc.);
• -incentives for sustainable forest management;
• -investment of forest revenues into sustainable forest management, regeneration, and expansion of the forestry estate through plantation development; and
• -enhancement of the ability of local communities within or near the forest to obtain appropriate returns and other benefits from sustainably managed forests.

In addition, the strategy recommends a major review of progress toward Target 2000 for 1995.

Guidelines for Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests

Also at the 1990 session in Bali, the ITTO adopted non-binding guidelines for the sustainable management of natural tropical forests.(27) Initially, attempts were made to agree upon binding guidelines for 'best practice', but producer governments rejected this idea as a violation of their national sovereignty. (See: Appendix C: ITTO Guidelines for the Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests.)

The sustainable management guidelines are a compilation of principles and 'possible actions' ranging from general policy to forestry operations issues. Forest policy, national forest inventory, permanent forest estate, forest ownership, and national forest services are treated under the heading of Policy and Legislation in the ITTO Guidelines. The Forest Management section addresses planning, harvesting, protection, legal arrangements, and monitoring and research; while relations with local populations, economics, incentives, and taxation are treated under the rubric of Socioeconomic and Financial Aspects. For example, the first principle, which relates to forest policy, establishes that "A strong and continued political commitment at the highest level is indispensable for sustainable forest management to succeed." Possible action number one, which corresponds to that principle, states that: "A national land use policy aiming at the sustainable use of all natural resources, including the establishment of a permanent forest base, should be developed and adopted."(28) The guidelines also include examples of elements for possible inclusion in national and operational guidelines in its appendices.

As a checklist of environmental management aspects, these guidelines may be especially useful to consumer-country timber importers in identifying sustainable sources of tropical timber, since plans to introduce timber source labelling are often impractical and susceptible to abuse. With the ITTO's document, importers can seek assurances that the recommended 'possible actions' are being undertaken at the local level, and make use of the document's appendices on categories of forest land, forest inventory, roads, harvesting, and concession legislation for timber extraction.

Projects and Studies

Beyond its target- and standard-setting activities, the ITTO has undertaken several pilot and study projects. Some pilot schemes initiated by the ITTO, such as multipurpose forest management, or studying the potential of lesser-known species, have yielded fruitful and replicable results.

The ITTO's greatest potential may lie in some of the policy studies it has initiated, especially those that respond to its sustainable forest utilization mandate. For example, in 1988, the ITTO commissioned a worldwide survey of how much forest was being sustainably managed. The survey found only a negligible amount of forest being managed for sustainable, long-term timber production (0.08 percent). The resulting report, No Timber Without Trees, unquestionably alerted many in the media, trade, government, and public to the virtual absence of any natural forest management and to the urgent need for measures to introduce it.(29) Study projects of this kind can have an immense impact. There is little doubt that this study did much to lay the groundwork for stimulating the Council to endorse Target 2000.

Sarawak Mission

A fourth significant area of work for the ITTO is its monitoring function. An example of ITTO activity in this area was an official investigative mission, led by England's Lord Cranbrook, to investigate the conflict between loggers and native peoples in Sarawak, Malaysia. At the May 1989 meeting in Cote d'Ivoire, the ITTO resolved to send the mission with the aim of assessing "the sustainable utilization and conservation of tropical forests and their genetic resources, as well as the maintenance of the ecological balance in Sarawak...with a view to ensuring their optimum utilization.''(30)

The study mission, which reported to the Council the following May, is an example of the Council's quick response to international environmental pressure. The report recommended greater emphasis on biological diversity conservation, increases in protected forest area, and a reduction in the timber harvest from existing levels of 13 million cubic meters to 9.3 million cubic meters per year. However the mission's view was restricted by its inability to review land rights questions, mainly due to the absence of legal expertise on the team.

Thus, the 'Cranbrook mission' report was a disappointment to some, because it failed to spell out mechanisms to resolve the issue of land rights. Other features of the report also appeared to conservationists as a step backwards, such as the report's limited reference to non-timber forest products or the environmental services of the forest.

The failure of the Governments of Sarawak and Malaysia to address the mission's criticisms of the timber extractors has been an additional disappointment to some. Official reports indicate that rather than a reduction, Sarawak's Forestry Department has undertaken major increases in annual extraction rates -- estimated to have reached 18 million cubic meters in 1990. Such increases may be perceived by critics to reflect an inability of the ITTO to affect positive change.

Renegotiating the ITTA

Under the terms of the ITTA, the ITTO is an independent organization, controlled by the Council, that had a set term of authority of five years. The Council was empowered to extend its term twice, by up to two years each time. The Council is already in its second extension, so its authority will lapse in 1994. By that time, the ITTA must either be renegotiated or the ITTO will be dissolved.

The negotiation of a successor agreement to the ITTA will begin with a Preparatory Committee meeting (PrepCom) on November 11, 1992 and will continue through the first half of 1993. To prepare for the PrepCom, a small, informal advance meeting will be held by a group of ITTO members, including the United States, in late September. The September preparation date means that the U.S. government will have to be prepared to discuss the issues with other governments at least at an informal level as early as September 1992. In preparation for the negotiations, the State Department and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) have solicited the views of various groups active in timber trade and forest preservation.

Due to the March 1994 deadline, it seems likely that ITTO meetings in 1993 and 1994 will be largely focused on renegotiating the ITTA, leaving little room for further substantive progress, though the ITTA negotiations may include a substantive focus.

Possibilities for Reform

Opinions regarding the ITTO vary widely. In general, industry representatives have been pleased with its growing role. On the other hand, environmentalists, in particular, have begun to express growing dissatisfaction with the ITTO's halting progress. Although no organization has yet taken a strong position on the issue of renegotiation, there seem to be two emerging schools of thought in the environmental community: 1) The ITTO should cease to exist, since it is ineffective and its continued existence obstructs legitimate efforts to achieve sustainability in forest utilization; and 2) The ITTO should continue to exist regardless of the outcome of the renegotiation because it has become an important international forum which would be difficult to recreate.

Among the environmental community, however, there is widespread agreement that the ITTO has failed in its mission to promote trade based on sustainably managed timber resources. Most NGOs are hoping that renegotiation of the ITTA will transform the organization into one that can be effective on the ground. Ideas for reform include:(31)

• -the mandate of the ITTA should be expanded to include all forest types;
• -the ITTA should reform project funding and administration directives, encouraging the formation of partnerships with other institutions and downgrading the focus on project funding;
• -the ITTA should commit the signatory nations to avoiding logging in the territories of indigenous peoples;
• -the ITTA should oblige countries to preserve "substantial stands of primary/old growth forests" or "representational forest ecosystems"; the ITTA should endorse a commitment to halt or curb deforestation;
• -the ITTA should require that all countries develop national plans, describing how they intend to make a transition to the year 2000 goal, and conforming to the relevant principles of the reformed TFAP;
• -the ITTA should require all countries to develop national and/or regional guidelines for sustainable management based on the ITTO Guidelines for Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests;

--the ITTA mandate should be expanded to include non-timber forest products;

• -the ITTO should concentrate on promoting policy reforms necessary for achieving sustainability;
• -the ITTO should use its powers of enforcement and regulation to develop specific mechanisms to promote the transition to sustainability (e.g. Labeling, certification, trade sanctions, or trade restrictions);
• -the ITTO should institute a program to monitor progress towards the year 2000 goal;
• -the ITTO should establish a network of demonstration projects -- a major goal that has so far been undermined by an unfocused project development cycle;
• -the ITTO should promote reforestation and rehabilitation of degraded lands; and
• -the public should be given full access to all relevant information regarding state-sponsored forest management plans.

Other interests have not yet compiled a comparable array of suggestions regarding the renegotiation of the ITTA.

The Relationship Between the ITTO and the TFAP

National representatives on the FAO's Committee on Forest Development in the Tropics (CFDT) initiated the TFAP at the same time that it became clear that negotiations over the ITTA were going to succeed in producing a new international agency concerned with tropical forestry. It is unclear whether this move to "elaborate proposals for action programs for tropical forest development" simply reflected the rising tide of international concern over tropical forest destruction, or whether it was the result of a belated tactical maneuver to avoid a usurping of responsibilities by a new and rival agency. Nonetheless, it is significant that a rivalry of sorts has existed from the start between the two initiatives.

As 'mechanisms', ITTO and TFAP are not comparable. The TFAP is a process, rather than an organization, designed to promote action on forestry at a national level. It is essentially a device to mobilize countries to produce national plans for their forests, and then involve aid agencies to fund more forestry projects to implement those plans. The ITTO, on the other hand, is a 'free standing' organization, focused on a specific commodity. Its membership of developed and developing countries is constitutionally balanced by weighted voting to reflect national interests in the tropical timber trade.

From their inception, the ITTO and the TFAP tended to draw support from different groups in the international trade, development, and environment communities. As the implementing organization for the ITTA, the ITTO had its origins in a relatively narrow range of concerns over the economic viability of the timber trade. Yet as it evolved, the ITTO has increasingly focused on conservation aspects of the management of the natural tropical rainforests. By contrast, the TFAP was established under the sponsorship of foresters, who had a mandated concern, not only with optimizing timber production from forests, but also with conserving the other attributes and resources that forests provide, such as environmental services provided by watersheds, plant species, and wildlife. Nevertheless, the TFAP has focused largely on timber production and the fostering of timber-related industries.

Thus, the TFAP, with its more general forest mandate, became focused on industrial wood production, while the ITTO, an organization devoted to logging and timber trade promotion, acquired the conservation management of all the natural forest's resources as an objective.

In some ways, the TFAP's lack of emphasis on natural forest management for productive purposes contributed to the development of the ITTO's 'sustainability' mandate. But it is questionable whether the ITTO's conservation mandate has made the two initiatives complementary. The level of effort and funding that goes into development of industrial forestry via the TFAP far outweighs the resources devoted to the ITTO's work in sustainable natural forest management and probably overwhelms its effects.

Endnotes

19. Johnson, Brian. Responding to Deforestation: An Eruption of Crises - An Array of Solutions. World Wildlife Fund and The Conservation Foundation. Washington, DC, 1991. p. 10.

20. Hpay, Terence. The International Tropical Timber Agreement: Its Prospects for Tropical Timber Trade, Development and Forest Management. IUCN/IIED Tropical Forest Policy Paper -- No. 3. International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Cambridge, 1986. p. 2.

21. International Tropical Timber Agreement, 1983. United Nations. New York, 1984. p. 8.

22. International Tropical Timber Agreement, 1983. Op. Cit., p. 8.

23. Hpay, Terence. Op. Cit., p. 2.

24. International Tropical Timber Agreement, 1983. Op. Cit., p. 8.

25. Dr. Freezailah bin Che Yeom, Executive Director, ITTO. Remarks regarding "Upcoming Negotiations for the International Tropical Timber Agreement." Rosslyn, VA, September 23, 1992.

26. See: Arden-Clarke, Charles. Conservation and Sustainable Management of Tropical Forests: The Role of ITT0 and GATT. World Wildlife Fund Discussion Paper. World Wildlife Fund. Washington, DC, November 1990.

27. See: ITTO Guidelines for the Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests. ITTO Technical Series 5. ITTO. Yokohama, Japan, December 1990.

28. ITTO Guidelines for the Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests. Op. Cit., p. 1.

29. See: Poore, Duncan. No Timber Without Trees: Sustainability in the Tropical Forest. Earthscan Publications. London, 1989.

30. ITTO. The Promotion of Sustainable Forest Management: A Case Study in Sarawak, Malaysia. Report Submitted to the International Tropical Timber Council. ITTC (VIII)/7, May 7, 1990. p. 2.

31. These ideas were synthesized by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) based on meetings in July 1992 with the following organizations: the Audubon Society, the Bank Information Center, the Energy and Environmental Studies Institute (EESI), the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Friends of the Earth (FoE), GLOBE, Greenpeace, the International Society of Tropical Foresters (ISTF), the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Nature Conservancy (TNC), the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), the Rainforest Alliance, the Sierra Club, the World Resources Institute (WRI), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).