Time to shout timber's green message

The Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference and a range of high profile new anti-deforestation projects will wrack up the pressure on the global timber trade to make its environmental case.

Deforestation is going to be squarely on the table at the Copenhagen meeting in December, which is now expected to attract 60-plus heads of state, as well as environment ministers from around the world. One proposal is that the REDD-initiative, which stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, will be built into the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the successor to the Kyoto protocol, which it is hoped will come out of the conference or follow-up negotiations.

REDD aims to create an international mechanism where poor forest countries, principally those in the tropics, are paid by others to reduce deforestation. The role of sustainable forestry and timber production within the strategy is unclear, but patently not central. REDD seems fundamentally to be about “leaving living trees standing”.

The same seems true of the Prince’s Rainforest Project, the latest eco brainchild of the Prince of Wales, which just last week was pledged US$250m by the US government, with cash subsequently promised by the UK too. Mention of sustainable timber production in the Project’s prospectus is conspicuous by its absence.

Last week the Norwegian government also agreed to give Guyana US$250m over the next five years to halt deforestation, while another new organisation, Cool Earth, has launched a programme to buy up strategic strips of rainforest, blocking access to the area beyond to anyone who wants to clear the land or remove timber. So far the group, set up by sports tycoon and former labour minister Johan Eliasch, has bought 125,000 acres of rainforest in South America.

However worthwhile the aims of these various schemes, by omitting or sidelining sustainable forestry and wood production in their mix of solutions, they risk strengthening the automatic association in the minds of specifiers, consumers and politicians between timber and deforestation. Consequently people may steer clear of wood altogether, and the market will be even more skewed towards other materials with far weaker environmental credentials, notably steel, plastic and concrete.

By giving people a long-term economic incentive to maintain their tree cover through harvesting and selling their timber, sustainable forest management can play a vital role in the battle against deforestation, not to mention providing us all with a renewable high-embodied carbon raw material. But the timber industry has to make that argument loud and clear and at the highest level. And it has to do it urgently as it is becoming clear that no-one else in all these headline-grabbing global environmental initiatives is going to speak up on its behalf.