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Under Secretary for Global Affairs Timothy Wirth Remarks at the National Academy of Sciences Washington, D.C., April 2, 1997 As released by the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs

"Towards Sustainable Forests - 1997"

On behalf of Secretary Albright and the Department of State, I want to join with Secretary Rominger in welcoming you here today. It is a great pleasure to have you here -- and a privilege for us all to work together on the crucial issue of conserving the forests of our nation and our globe.

In the last decade, our world has changed rapidly. Economically, nations are connected through markets, trade, telephones and transportation as never before. Computers and entertainment -- the global information superhighway -- also bring us closer and closer together. And global-scale environmental challenges profoundly demonstrate the degree to which we share common concerns -- depending on the same atmosphere, oceans and other basic natural resources. Forests are part and parcel of this natural inheritance and represent the richest and most productive ecosystems on Earth.

Forests are an essential environmental resource. They are home to 70 percent of all land-living plants and animals. They provide important ecological services -- from habitat and soil conservation to guarding against floods, landslides and other natural disasters. On a broader scale, forests are a crucial link in the planet's carbon cycle, sequestering enormous amounts of carbon. Forests are also storehouses of biological diversity and untold genetic wonders. Forests have yielded traditional medicines for centuries and more recently have produced pharmaceuticals that are widely relied upon - quinine from the chinchona plant, taxol from the Pacific yew, anti-leukemia agents from the rosy periwinkle.

Forests are also a critical economic resource -- providing food, fuel, shelter and jobs for millions of the world's people. As the world's largest trader in forest products, the United States is well aware of their economic importance in generating export revenues. Every year, America imports $29 billion worth of lumber, plywood, pulp, furniture and other forest products from almost every producer nation on earth. Similarly, each year we export $24 billion worth of forest products all over the globe. As they do environmentally, forests link us economically in today's integrated trading system.

Yet, forests around the world are being destroyed at unprecedented rates due to population pressures, subsistence agriculture, unsustainable and illegal logging, large-scale industrial and infrastructure projects, and national policies that subsidize forest conversion to other uses. In the tropics alone, 38 million acres (15 million hectares) of forest are cleared every year. In other regions, forests are being degraded and fragmented due to repeated logging, or they are suffering severe damage from air borne pollutants.

These trends are alarming and impact us all. We in the United States have an enormous stake in how the world's forests are managed -- and in decisions other countries make individually and collectively. When forests are destroyed, all of us can be affected sooner or later, directly or indirectly.

Nearly five years ago, world leaders gathered at the Earth Summit in Rio to explore the vital link between environment and development -- what we now call "sustainable development." In adopting the Statement of Forest Principles, the Earth Summit focused world attention for the first time on "sustainable forest management" as a key component of sustainable development -- one essential to the long-term well-being of local populations, national economies and the earth's biosphere as a whole.

The Rio gathering recognized that all types of forests, including temperate and boreal forests, must be sustainably managed for their multiple benefits in order to meet the needs of present and future generations. The Summit also recognized that this was not an easy task -- that sustainable forest management presents challenges as daunting and complex as sustainable development itself.

Building on the lessons and agreements of Rio, the United States has come to believe that the world's forests must be sustainably managed -- including our own 740 million acres (300 million hectares). That is why in 1993 President Clinton became the first head of state to commit to the national goal of sustainably managing forests by the year 2000. And we are delighted that other countries, including many represented here today, have joined in making similar commitments for their own forests.

Internationally, we also have seen important strides since Rio. The most sweeping

and potentially far-reaching are embodied in the regional and international initiatives that have been taken to assess national trends in forest conditions using agreed "criteria and indicators" for sustainable forest management. Criteria and indicators help define the essential components of sustainable management -- biological diversity, forest health and vitality, forest productivity, socio-economic benefits, and so on -- and ways to measure them. In the process, they enable a common understanding of what is meant by "sustainable forest management."

The United States has been pleased to be active in the so-called "Montreal Process" on criteria and indicators, through which we are working with a set of 12 countries as diverse as Russia, Chile, China, Australia and Canada to collect national level data for

the 7 criteria and 67 indicators that we have agreed characterize sustainable forest management. Based on this data, we will prepare a joint Montreal Process report on the state of our forests -- which account for 90% of the world's temperate and boreal forests and 60% of all forests.

Today, more than 130 countries are involved in similar initiatives -- in Europe, in the Amazon, in Central America, Africa and the Near East, and through the International Tropical Timber Organization. Together, these efforts to assess national forest conditions and management represent a significant collective concrete step toward assessing, and in turn advancing, sustainable management. A triumph of substance over rhetoric.

Yet there is a great deal more to do -- as this year's calendar of events illustrates, 1997 will be a landmark year for considering forests in the international arena and affords us all a unique opportunity to make real strides towards our shared goal of sustainable forest management.

In February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests, established under the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, successfully concluded two years of dialogue and debate by endorsing 135 proposals for action to promote sustainable forest management worldwide. These proposals represent a constructive package of initiatives for national and international action. Beginning next week, the Commission will review the Panel's progress as a prelude to the Special Session of the UN General Assembly on Environment and Development, which will meet in June -- five years after the Rio Earth Summit.

Clearly, the time for action is now. The question is how can we best move from talk to real improvements on-the-ground -- which is the only place sustainable forest management can be achieved.

Some countries -- and I stress these countries in no way reflect a consensus -- are calling for the negotiation of a new international treaty or convention as the way to achieve sustainable forest management. Why? These countries say a convention is needed to look at forests "holistically" and to coordinate ongoing activities, to keep forests visible on international and political agendas, to mobilize financial and technical resources, and to facilitate trade.

Frankly, we are not persuaded that a new convention is needed to meet any of these objectives. Nor are many others -- as is clear from the International Citizens' Declaration against a convention, which represents some 110 environmental NGOs around the world.

The United States agrees that a holistic approach to forests is important, especially at the national level in support of national priorities, but this does not require a new treaty. Yes, forest should continue to command attention at the highest levels, and the last five years clearly show the enormous and still growing interest in forests by the world community -- its people and its leaders. Forests will remain center stage on the world scene -- whether or not a new treaty is negotiated.

We also agree that funding and technology transfer are important challenges, but there is nothing to suggest that these will become more available under a convention. While international forest assistance needs to be better coordinated to support national priorities, better coordinated assistance, as Brian Atwood can tell us, does not depend on a new treaty.

Nor do we need a convention to promote open markets and non-discriminatory trade for forest products and services, which are of great interest to us all. The best way to facilitate trade is for countries to implement the agreements we recently achieved after protracted negotiations in the Uruguay Round and to work to eliminate tariffs in the forest sector. And the final meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests showed that countries are not ready to negotiate a meaningful convention and that we still need to build consensus on some key issues.

So we have concluded that rather than dissipate energy on a forest convention -- which would undoubtedly be costly and time-consuming -- it would be far more useful to build on the momentum already achieved by the Forest Panel by concentrating in a variety of existing international and regional fora -- as well as with key countries -- on several priority areas where progress is necessary and possible.

Let me share with you our vision of what must be done and where we should focus our collective efforts and resources. I might call this our "7 point plan" for forests.

1. First, we believe governments must be accountable for sustainably managing their forests. To facilitate this, we should convene an International Forum on Forests under the UN Commission on Sustainable Development to report and review progress on implementation of the action items already agreed by the Forest Panel.

2. We need to help governments to better manage their forests and to implement the Panel's action items by targeting assistance to national and local capacity building. This assistance should focus on training and developing human resources, implementation of forest laws to reduce illegal logging and other illegal activities, and implementation of criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management.

3. Given the burgeoning role of the private sector in decisions, actions and resources affecting forests, we need to help publicize and encourage responsible private activities. We should encourage the development of voluntary codes of conduct by the private sector aimed at promoting sustainable forest management through both their domestic and overseas actions. We also need to build on the enormous potential for the private sector itself -- and in concert with governments and NGOs -- to make positive investments in forest management and technology transfer through joint venture, including public-private partnerships, debt-for-nature swaps, and "joint implementation programs" under the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

4. We need to expand the global process for assessing and monitoring worldwide forest conditions, building in key environmental and social parameters related to forests. At the same time, we need to improve the science of sustainable forest management -- which is still in its formative stages -- and better focus research on how to apply effective on-the-ground forest management practices for different forest ecosystems.

5. We need to protect biodiversity globally, by working with governments and non-government groups to assess the conservation status of key tree species, and by working through the Convention on Biological Diversity to establish national networks of protected forest areas.

6. We need to promote market mechanisms and economic instruments that are supportive of sustainable forest management. This means governments need to eliminate subsidies, market distortions, and tariffs and other trade barriers that act as disincentives to good forest management. Governments must also put in place tax and other economic policy reforms that promote sustainable forest management.

I personally feel that one of our greatest challenges in this area will be to devise ways to value the "free" services provided by forest ecosystems and nature as a whole: clean water, clean air, stable soils. And much more. To my mind, there is little doubt that even small investments in the "biological capital" of forests can generate big returns to society by providing potable water, preventing land slides, protecting downstream agriculture -- all of which represent countless billions of property, prosperity, and human life.

7. Last but not least, all governments must build basic democratic principles into their forest programs at all levels. This means establishing secure land tenure arrangements, providing for meaningful participation in public policy and decision-making, and ensuring that timely and accurate information is made available to all interested parties. An informed and aware public always makes better decisions.

These are the actions we in the United States believe must be taken to achieve sustainable forest management. Through the existing network of international and regional meetings, initiatives, and relationships between countries and with the private sector, we have the tools we need. But political will is the key to sustainable forest management. What we need now is a common effort by all of us -- internally, in unison and with urgency.

The debate over forests is often so polarized that it becomes hard to step back and look for common ground. But we must do so. All of us in this room have a stake in how forests are managed, and we are in a position to do something about it -- if we can work together.

Multilateral efforts are only part of the international picture on forests. Bilateral approaches, including both diplomacy and assistance, are also important tools. On the diplomatic side, we at the State Department are privileged to be working with several countries here today at their request to consider strategic approaches to managing their forests, including those at risk from large-scale off-shore logging concessions.

While it may be easy to take a doom and gloom view of the state of the world's forests, there remain, as the Washington Post remarked in an editorial the other day, significant opportunities. I believe the intersecting challenges of economic progress and environmental protection are the great challenges before us as we approach the dawn of a new millenium. On issues like sustainable forest management and through institutions like the Commission on Sustainable Development, we are trying to forge consensus among nations and define a common vision for the future -- in service to a commitment for national progress and international cooperation.

[End of Document]

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