413 - World-Wide Tree News

October 13, 2008

--Today for you 28 news articles about earth's trees! (413th edition)

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In this issue:

Not so site-specific news related to the world's trees

Index:

--World-wide: 1) Forests Dialogue's Initiative, 2) Forests Dialogue's

Initiative cont., 3) EU Emissions Trading Scheme will include forest

issues, 4) IUCN's World Conservation Congress, 5) Black Globalization,

6) Annual cost of forest loss between $2 trillion and $5 trillion, 7)

Mangroves are our " rainforests by the sea, " 8) International Union for

Conservation of Nature on " Red list, " 9) Value of Deadwood, 10) A

cancer within the environmental movement, 11) " Life as Commerce "

features case studies, 12) We must face twin menace of climate change

and the degradation of ecosystems, 13) Most detailed assessment ever

of worldwide conservation status in national parks and reserves, 14)

What's " conflict timber? " 15) Only treaty that governs forest products

is Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, 16)

Indigenous leaders unite! 17) RAN starts to regain credibility, 18)

RAN credibility cont. 19) First-ever globally relevant sustainable

tourism criteria, 20) Wanna buy carbon credits to assuage your guilt?

21) New Yorker: Stolen Forests, 22) State of the world's mammals, 23)

RAN history, 24) Fragmentation is bad for many reasons, 25) More on

World Conservation Congress, 26) Wildlife Conservation Network, 27) A

man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it is committing

another mistake, 28) 500 million hectares of plantations required for

biomass power,

Articles:

World-wide:

1) The Forests Dialogue's Initiative on Forests and Climate Change

brought together more than 250 representatives of governments,

forestry companies, trade unions, environmental and social groups,

international organizations, forest owners, indigenous peoples and

forest-community groups in a series of meetings over 10 months. For

the first time, the group has agreed on five guiding principles for

climate change negotiators. In a landmark statement entitled Beyond

REDD: The Role of Forests in Climate Change, the Initiative also

agreed on exactly what role forests can play in the battle to halt

damaging climate change. The group specifies that sustainable forest

management that reduces deforestation and degradation and that

actively supports the livelihoods of millions of forest-dependent

communities must now be one of the world's highest priorities. This is

because forests and forest products have the unique ability to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions, capture carbon, and lessen peoples'

vulnerability to climate change. " For the first time on this

unprecented scale, forest leaders, business representatives, donors,

and community groups not only agreed on the pivotal role that forests

can play in mitigating climate change but also mapped out a consensus

action plan on concrete next steps. We now ask the world to work with

us in putting these guiding principles into action, " says Stewart

Maginnis, Head of the Forest Conservation Programme at IUCN, the

International Union for Conservation of Nature.

http://www.waltainfo.com/walnew/index.php?option=com_content & task=view & id=3510 & I\

temid=48

2) The Forests Dialogue — a coalition consisting of more than 250

representatives of governments, forestry companies, trade unions,

environmental and social groups, international organizations, forest

owners, indigenous peoples and forest-community groups — has issued

guiding principles for including forests in climate change

negotiations. The initiative also released a statement calling for

sustainable forest management that reduces deforestation, helps fight

climate change, and supports rural livelihoods to be made a global

priority. " For the first time on this unprecedented scale, forest

leaders, business representatives, donors, and community groups not

only agreed on the pivotal role that forests can play in mitigating

climate change but also mapped out a consensus action plan on concrete

next steps. We now ask the world to work with us in putting these

guiding principles into action, " said Stewart Maginnis, Head of IUCN's

Forest Conservation Program. The statement and the guiding principles

appear below. - Beyond REDD: The Role of Forests in Climate Change, A

Statement from The Forests Dialogue - 1. Ensure that forest-related

climate change options support sustainable development in both

forest-rich and forest-poor countries. 2. Tackle the drivers of

deforestation that lie outside the forests sector. 3. Support

transparent, inclusive, and accountable forest governance. 4.

Encourage local processes to clarify and strengthen tenure, property,

and carbon rights. 5. Provide substantial additional funding to build

the capacity to put the above principles into practice. CONCLUSION:

Those who met under the auspices of The Forests Dialogue on Climate

Change understand that although individuals, communities, and nations

have made widely divergent contributions to the increasing

concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, solving the

problem will require a unified global response. Equally, while

solutions to climate change must respect national sovereignty and

contribute to national development, they must also respect human

rights. http://news.mongabay.com/2008/1008-forest_dialog.html

3) " Consensus on forests is rare. When it is achieved, the world

should listen. When it offers a solution to climate change, the world

must listen, " stressed the group. Stewart Maginnis, head of the Forest

Conservation Programme at the International Union for Conservation of

Nature, agreed: " For the first time on this unprecedented scale,

forest leaders, business representatives, donors and community groups

not only agreed on the pivotal role that forests can play in

mitigating climate change but also mapped out a consensus action plan

on concrete next steps. We now ask the world to work with us. "

Delegates from the world over have been exploring mechanisms to reward

those that curb deforestation, especially in developing countries. But

environmentalists have warned that without the right safeguards, such

proposals could backfire. In particular, NGOs are opposed to including

forests in carbon emissions trading schemes, saying this was a mere

ploy to avoid real carbon emissions reductions at home. But members of

the European Parliament's environment committee (ENVI) this week voted

to include the issue forests in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (see

EurActiv Links Dossier), saying countries should be allowed to offset

up to 5% of their total emission reduction commitments in exchange for

preserving forests in developing countries. The Commission had

originally left forests out of its climate package, arguing that it

was too difficult to measure emissions from this sector with accuracy.

http://www.euractiv.com/en/climate-change/landmark-consensus-forests-pivotal-cli\

mate-role/article-176247

4) Marton-Lefèvre was addressing more than 8,000 specialists from the

conservation community, governments, nongovernmental organizations,

academia, private sector, women and indigenous groups who have

gathered in Barcelona for the IUCN's World Conservation Congress, held

once every four years. " In the last four days the call to protect the

planet has been heard from both government leaders and the NGO

community, " says Valli Moosa, president of IUCN. " Environmental

concerns are now at the top of the decision-makers priority list. "

While the world is entangled in the turmoil of a financial crisis, at

the World Conservation Congress civil society, environmentalists,

governments and business have been defining a different way forward.

The 10 day conference opened Sunday and even during these difficult

financial times, it has been the occasion of announcements of

substantial investments in conservation funding. The John D. and

Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is committing $50 million to help

conservation groups working in eight biodiversity hotspots preserve

biodiversity in the face of climate change. The eight places all have

high concentrations of species, many of which are found nowhere else

and all are under extreme threat. They include the Lower Mekong,

Eastern Himalayas, and Melanesia in Asia and the Pacific; Madagascar

and the Albertine Rift in Africa; and the Insular Caribbean and

southern and northern Andes in Latin America. " The scale and urgency

of the climate change problem demands that the international

conservation community step up its efforts, " said MacArthur President

Jonathan Fanton told conference participants in Barcelona. " It is

clear that for conservation to succeed in the face of climate change

there must be shared science, coordinated action, and the capacity for

rapid response, backed up with increased financial resources. " The $33

million Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund was announced

Thursday. It was established by Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh

Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who " hopes to make a genuine contribution

to species conservation worldwide " when the fund's operations commence

by January 2009.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2008/2008-10-10-01.asp

5) Black globalization is an evocative name for how multi-nationals

and mafias can blur together by using violence and global trade to

avoid regulation, certification, and quality control. In the New

Yorker article The Stolen Forests Raffi Khatchadourian writes about

the global trade in illegally logged timber, and how an environmental

NGO, the environment investigation agency, collects data to document

illegal logging and encourage law enforcement. " Chances are good that

if an item sold in the United States was recently made in China using

oak or ash, the wood was imported from Russia through Suifenhe.

Because as much as half of the hardwood from Primorski Krai is

harvested in violation of Russian law—either by large companies

working with corrupt provincial officials or by gangs of men in remote

villages—it is likely that any given piece of wood in the city has

been logged illegally. This wide-scale theft empowers mafias, robs the

Russian government of revenue, and assists in the destruction of one

of the most precious ecosystems in the Northern Hemisphere. Lawmakers

in the province have called for " emergency measures " to stem the flow

of illegal wood, and Russia's Minister of Natural Resources has said

that in the region " there has emerged an entire criminal branch

connected with the preparation, storage, transportation, and selling

of stolen timber. " http://rs.resalliance.org/2008/10/10/722/

6) The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern

Review into the economics of climate change. It has been discussed

during many sessions here at the World Conservation Congress. It puts

the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.

The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that

forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon

dioxide. Some conservationists see it as a new way of persuading

policymakers to fund nature protection rather than allowing the

decline in ecosystems and species, highlighted in the release on

Monday of the Red List of Threatened Species, to continue. Speaking to

BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan Sukhdev

emphasised that the cost of natural decline dwarfs losses on the

financial markets. " It's not only greater but it's also continuous,

it's been happening every year, year after year, " he told BBC News.

" So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost,

within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at

today's rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5

trillion every year. " The review that Mr Sukhdev leads, The Economics

of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb), was initiated by Germany under

its recent EU presidency, with the European Commission providing

funding. The first phase concluded in May when the team released its

finding that forest decline could be costing about 7% of global GDP.

The second phase will expand the scope to other natural systems. Key

to understanding his conclusions is that as forests decline, nature

stops providing services which it used to provide essentially for

free. So the human economy either has to provide them instead, perhaps

through building reservoirs, building facilities to sequester carbon

dioxide, or farming foods that were once naturally available. Or we

have to do without them; either way, there is a financial cost. The

Teeb calculations show that the cost falls disproportionately on the

poor, because a greater part of their livelihood depends directly on

the forest, especially in tropical regions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7662565.stm

7) Mangroves can be described as 'rainforests by the sea'. Large

stretches of the sub-tropical and tropical coastlines of Asia, Africa,

Oceania, the Americas and the Caribbean are fringed by mangroves, once

estimated to cover an area of over 32 million hectares. Now, less than

15 million hectares remain —less than half the original area. The

depletion of the world's mangroves is due to excessive shrimp farms,

tourist complexes and intense land development. According to the

latest study by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the

current rate of mangrove loss is around 1% per annum—or around 150,000

ha of new mangrove area loss per year. Now, the Mangrove Action

Project (MAP) is working with other organizations in the global South

towards restoring degraded and cleared mangrove areas as a high

priority. MAP is especially interested in restoring some of the

250,000 ha of abandoned shrimp farms located in former coastal wetland

areas, especially in Asia and Latin America. But, even more

importantly, MAP is working to help conserve and protect existing

mangrove wetlands around the world.

http://blog.adreamforabetterworld.com/2008/10/10/the-rapid-depletion-of-the-worl\

d%E2%80%99s-mangrove-forests/

8) " We are really in trouble, " Julia Marton-Lefevre, head of the

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), told Reuters on

Wednesday after an IUCN " Red List " this week showed that a quarter of

all mammals were threatened with extinction. " The amount of loss we

have been able to measure ... is really pretty frightening, " she said

during an Oct 5-14 IUCN congress, held once every four years, during

which 8,000 delegates are looking for better ways to safeguard the

planet. The IUCN groups governments, conservation organizations and

scientists. " People really get it that we have less water, that the

water we have is not usable, that we have fewer places to breathe.

People are noticing that the environment we have been taking for

granted all of a sudden is not really there or there in a smaller

way, " Marton-Lefevre said. She said the Barcelona congress showed

conservation was " no longer a sideshow. " The meeting is drawing

government ministers, leaders of businesses such as oil group Shell

and miner Rio Tinto, and indigenous peoples from the Amazon. The mood

was " there's enough conviction now that there is a problem and we do

have some solutions so let's get on with it, " she said. But economic

arguments about the essential role of biodiversity -- for uses such as

food, pharmaceuticals or building materials -- had not yet sunk in

fully. " Maybe the economic message hasn't yet been made clear to

people. Once they start counting, I think they'll see it pretty

clearly, " she said. A report submitted to a U.N. biodiversity

conference in May said mankind was causing 50 billion euros ($68

billion) of damage to the planet's land areas every year, with factors

including pollution and deforestation. High food prices highlighted

the effect of loss of biodiversity, it said. The cumulative loss could

amount to at least 7 percent of annual consumption by 2050, it said.

That meant conservation was a huge long-term challenge even if

financial turmoil was now overshadowing threats to nature.

Marton-Lefevre said conservation was increasingly trying to " join the

dots. It's not just the one species that you are in love with that the

world is losing, but 'what does this mean?'.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Earth/Economics_seen_bolstering_case_to_prote\

ct_nature/articleshow/3576338.cms

9) Traditionally woodland was kept " clean " by clearing away fallen

timber. However, nowadays it is recognised that deadwood has an

important part to play in forest management. Deadwood was removed to

prevent the transfer of disease and pests – a mistaken belief as it

happens, for almost all species which inhabit deadwood are specific to

that habitat ( " saproxylic " ) and will not inhabit living wood. Now

deadwood is recognised as an essential part of the forest ecosystem.

While your first image of deadwood might be a fallen tree, there are

in fact many types of " deadwood " . Lying thinnings can provide a useful

" carpet " for fungus, and dead branches on living trees can make roosts

for birds. Crevices and rot holes created by damage to the tree give

shelter to a whole host of invertebrates which in turn are food for

birds. " Snags " or standing dead trees can provide stable, long term

habitats. Native pines, for instance, can take up to 80 years to rot

and give a home to a whole host of creatures from the timberman beetle

which likes new deadwood, to the crested tit which nests in

well-decayed snags and stumps, and capercaillies and ospreys which

roost in large dead branches. Birchwood, on the other hand, rots from

the inside out creating a hollow tube which is ideal for roosting bats

and nesting sites for woodpeckers. It is not just within woodlands

that deadwood has a part to play. In and at the edge of watercourses

it traps organic matter and facilitates its breakdown into food for

aquatic invertebrates. It also provides cover for fish and other

creatures dwelling at the edge of the river. It can also alter the

water flow, creating pools for instance with natural dams. Deadwood is

also a feature of natural bog woodlands. In the south-east of England

where woodland has been fairly heavily managed, the great storm of

1987 created a mass of fallen timber which led to a resurgence in many

saproxylic species. On the whole, providing there are no safety issues

and it is not in an overwhelming quantity, the preference now is to

leave standing dead trees and fallen limbs where they are, and to

stack cut timber. Even artificial " damage " can be created by careful

cutting of crevices with a chainsaw. Further reading is available in

the The Forestry Commission's interesting and comprehensive

publication, " Life in the Deadwood "

http://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/conservation/deadwood/

10) MacDonald is convinced -- to paraphrase a Watergate standard --

there is a cancer within the environmental movement. The malignancy

can be traced to the alliances between conservation groups and

corporations that took root in the 1980s and exploded over the past

two decades. CI, The Nature Conservancy, and the World Wildlife Fund

all have come to rely on corporations and their foundations. The

conservation groups might refer to the corporations as blue-chip

companies. Not so, MacDonald. She calls them, " the devils of

deforestation. " For my money, there's nothing more delicious than a

book that lays bare the rot of a corrupted industry from an insider's

perspective. In the hands of a skilled observer, the subject can

spring to life. Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis's hilariously disturbing

account of Wall Street's investment-banking industry in the late

1980s, comes to mind. Lewis's book traces its lineage to Mark Singer's

Funny Money, a masterpiece of nonfiction that exposed the

double-dealing and corruption that led to the collapse of the savings

and loan industry. Singer's impeccable reporting and lively writing

carries the reader to the little Oklahoma bank at the epicenter of the

financial catastrophe and plops him down right in the middle of the

boardroom. So, it was with a certain amount of anticipation that I

picked up Christine MacDonald's book Green, Inc. (Lyons Press, $24.95)

a self-described insider's tale of how the environmental movement has

been hijacked by self-serving leaders and corporate stooges. The

book's press release promised to reveal chapter and verse of

mismanagement, malfeasance, and " double lives. " An ambitious goal, no

doubt, and I couldn't wait to tear into it. The author immediately

sets her sights on the Big Three of the conservation movement:

Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. arm of

the World Wildlife Fund -- though she doesn't pass up the opportunity

to slam the Environmental Defense Fund and its leader, Fred Krupp,

along with countless, but unidentified, environmental websites (what

she quaintly calls ejournals), and other various and sundry enablers.

She carries a special grudge for Peter Seligmann, CI's chair, and his

sidekick, CI President Russell Mittermeier, whom she paints as a

couple of overcompensated, jet-setting playboys who devote more time

to fawning over starlets and corporate chieftains than they do saving

the planet. http://www.grist.org/feature/2008/10/03/green.inc/?source=biz

11) " Life as Commerce " features case studies from India, Costa Rica,

South Africa, Paraguay and Colombia about the impact of market-based

conservation mechanisms like ecotourism, forest certification,

biodiversity offsets and carbon trade on Indigenous Peoples, local

communities and women. These impacts are particularly important in

light of the proposal by some countries to include forest conservation

into the global carbon market. At IUCN World Conservation Congress in

Barcelona, Global Forest Coalition managing coordinator Simone Lovera

said: " The report provides a number of fascinating real-life stories

on how these mechanisms work out at the community-level. It forms an

important addition to the increasing number of studies that focus on

the potential benefits of these mechanisms for local communities and

the rules and standards that are needed to generate these benefits. As

the case studies describe, such rules and standards seldom exist, and

even where they exist, they are not well-implemented as market

mechanisms make it attractive for powerful actors to circumvent them.

The costs of these mechanisms, also in terms of undermining community

governance, seem to outweigh the benefits in real-life situations. "

Market-based mechanisms are often seen as solutions to the lack of

funding for public conservation, but they are false solutions. The

current economic crisis has also shown the unreliability of global

markets as a potential funding source for conservation. Wally Menne

from the Timberwatch Coalition, who coordinated the case study of

South Africa related: " Take for example forest certification. Our case

study showed that the Forest Stewardship Council's certification

system, as practiced in South Africa, actually seems to be masking

many of the environmental, social and economic problems experienced by

communities living alongside monoculture timber plantations. The

expansion and development of the sector to meet increased global

demand for timber products has increased unemployment and functional

poverty into the area, and has led to encroachment into land and water

resources required for food production and food security. " Emphasizing

the importance of food security, a biofuel (agrofuels) review [3]

issued this Tuesday in Rome, Italy from the Food and Agriculture

Organization of the UN stated, " food security concerns loom

large....Particularly at risk are poor urban consumers and poor net

food buyers in rural areas. Many of the world's poor spend more than

half of their incomes on food. " The Global Forest Coalition welcomes

the FAO's call to review biofuel policies and subsidies in the light

of their impact on food security and precious ecosytems like forests.

http://www.globalforestcoalition.org/img/userpics/File/publications/LIFE-AS-COMM\

ERCE2008.pdf

12) " We must push our conservation movement to step up to the 21st

century challenges, and meet the twin menace of climate change and the

degradation of ecosystems, " he said at the opening ceremony. More than

8,000 ministers, UN officials, NGOs, scientists and business chiefs

have gathered in the Spanish city of Barcelona to brainstorm for 10

days on how to slow the rate of species extinction and steer the world

onto a path of sustainable development. The congress, held every four

years, will release an update on Monday of the benchmark " Red List " ,

deemed the global standard for conservation monitoring. The 2007

edition already shows more than a third of 41,000 species surveyed are

facing extinction: a quarter of all mammals, one out of eight birds,

one out of three amphibians, and 70 percent of plants. The new

biodiversity " bible " -- compiled from the work of 1,800 scientists --

is even grimmer, say researchers who took part in the effort.

Conservation work can no longer be confined to the narrow task of

saving animals and plants from extinction, Nobel Peace laureate

Mohammad Yunus told AFP before addressing the convention.

" Conservation of nature cuts across everything -- the sustainability

of the planet, of the lives of poor people, and the environmental

degradation that is harming nations, " said Yunus, who was awarded the

Nobel for helping to spread the practice of microcredit for poor

people around the world. With 11,000 volunteer scientists and more

than 1,000 paid staff, the IUCN runs thousands of field projects

around the globe to monitor and help manage natural environments.

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Conservation_congress_kicks_off_with_dire_warn\

ing_on_biodiversity_999.html

13) Based on input from more than 100 experts, this book aims to

provide the most detailed assessment ever of the worldwide

distribution and conservation status of national parks and reserves.

It examines the relationship between people and protected areas,

investigates threats and opportunities, cites the history of protected

areas, provides expert conservation advice and celebrates the success

of protected areas around the world. With 352 pages, The World's

Protected Areas: Status, value and prospects in the 21st Century,

which is published in associated with UNEP-WCMC by the University of

California Press, contains 110 colour illustrations, 165 line

illustrations and 39 colour maps. It is edited by Stuart Chape, Mark

Spalding and Martin Jenkins, and includes a foreword by Achim Steiner

and Julia Marton-Lefèvre. Available from University of California

Press: www.ucpress.edu A copy of the press release is available here

http://www.unep-wcmc.org/latenews/index.cfm#st172

14) In 2001, experts with the United Nations in the Democratic

Republic of Congo coined a phrase, " conflict timber, " to describe how

logging had become interwoven with the fighting there. The term is apt

for a number of other places. In Burma, stolen timber helps support

the junta and the rebels. In Cambodia, it helped fund the Khmer Rouge,

one of the most brutal rebel factions in history. Charles Taylor, the

former President of Liberia, distributed logging concessions to

warlords and a member of the Ukrainian mafia, and the Oriental Timber

Company—known in Liberia as Only Taylor Chops—conducted arms deals on

his behalf. The violence tied to Taylor's logging operations reached

unprecedented levels, and in 2003 the U.N. Security Council imposed

sanctions on all Liberian timber. (China, the largest importer of

Liberian timber, tried to block the sanctions.) Shortly afterward,

Taylor's regime collapsed. An American official told me that the U.S.

intelligence community " absolutely put the fall of Taylor on the

timber sanctions. " When von Bismarck discusses this type of violence,

there is emotion in his voice. Last December, the body of a Russian

banker with close ties to the timber industry was found at the bottom

of his swimming pool, near Moscow. A bag had been pulled over his

head, and his arms had been tied to his ankles. In a sloppy attempt at

a coverup, a suicide note had been left at the scene, prompting a

law-enforcement official to say, " He's not Harry Houdini. " I heard of

a similar " suicide " not far from Vladivostok earlier this year: an

activist working with the World Wildlife Fund was found at a remote

hunting cabin, fatally shot, an unconvincing note by his side. This

type of violence can be found elsewhere. Earlier this year, in Peru, a

community leader who tried to report a shipment of stolen timber was

shot to death in a government office. Three years ago, in Brazil, a

missionary and community organizer from Ohio, Sister Dorothy Stang,

was murdered in the state of Pará, where a third of the Brazilian

Amazon's deforestation is occurring and where she had made enemies of

loggers.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/06/081006fa_fact_khatchadourian

15) The only treaty that governs the global trade in forest products

is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species—what

one American official described to me as a kind of " emergency room "

for rare plant and animal species at the threshold of extinction. When

von Bismarck was investigating ramin, which is protected by the

convention, law-enforcement agents could, in theory, confiscate

shipments of goods made from the wood if they did not have the proper

permits. (No commercially traded Russian timber has this level of

protection.) In practice, the system does not always work very well.

Von Bismarck once tipped off the authorities about undocumented ramin

headed to a crib company called Baby Trilogy, in Lubbock, Texas. The

owners, friends of the Bush family, enlisted the office of Senator

John Cornyn, of Texas, to help get the shipment released, and it was.

(They say that they did not understand the law, and that this was

their last shipment of ramin.) Several years ago, a study found that

large volumes of mahogany—the only other commercially significant tree

protected by the convention—were entering the United States without

permits. During the past several years, von Bismarck and his

colleagues have been campaigning for a new way to control timber

imports: an amendment to a curious law called the Lacey Act, which,

for more than a century, has been a cornerstone of nature protection

in America. John F. Lacey, a Civil War veteran and congressman,

introduced the legislation in 1900, banning the interstate trade of

illegally hunted game. Over time, the Lacey Act was expanded to cover

the international trade of wildlife. No one has attempted to calculate

what it would cost to restrict all wood products to sustainable

forests and plantations. Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel Prize-winning

physicist, once defined sustainability as " living on nature's income

rather than its capital. " As a planet, then, if we are consuming the

world's forest capital—and deforestation suggests that we

are—everything we use that is derived from wood is undervalued. Von

Bismarck told me that an economy that structurally undervalues wood is

bound to accept illegal timber without much resistance, because the

excess black-market supply only reinforces the misconception that wood

is cheap and the supply nearly inexhaustible. (According to one

estimate, there is enough illicit timber traded worldwide to depress

global prices for wood by as much as sixteen per cent.) The notion is

reinforced by the murkiness of the timber economy. Very few companies

take the trouble to discover where the wood in their products

originates. To do so would be expensive, and consumers don't demand it

of them. Indifference has become the norm.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/06/081006fa_fact_khatchadourian

16) Indigenous leaders in five Amazonian nations, the Democratic

Republic of Congo and Indonesia on Wednesday demanded a larger say on

how best to manage tropical forests to fight climate change. More than

a billion poor people who depend on forest ecosystems risk economic

and cultural devastation if efforts favored by rich nations to reduce

greenhouse gases fail to respect their rights and needs, they said at

the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona. The clearing of

rainforests by developers for mining, slash-and-burn agriculture, cash

crops and livestock has all severely reduced the ability of tropical

forests to absorb the atmospheric carbon dioxide that drives global

warming. Many governments, scientists and green groups favor an

international carbon trading scheme that would compensate developing

countries for curbing their exploitation of their forests.

" Conservationists want to prevent us from using our forest lands for

economic purposes, and businesses have government concessions to

extract ore, water and biofuel from lands that have been ours for

generations, " said Tony James of Guyana, President of the Amerindian

Peoples Association. " We have been hearing more and more about the

carbon trade, but indigenous people are not being included in the

discussions. We want to know: who will own the carbon, and what will

be the impact on us? " Native groups should play a key role in crafting

any financing scheme for forests that might be included in a broader

UN climate change agreement on how to curb greenhouse gases, James

said. Without their input, he added, this so-called Reduced Emissions

from Deforestation and Forest Degradation mechanism, or REDD, would

undermine the land rights of forest communities throughout the

tropical world. During the Congress, members International Union for

the Conservation of Nature, composed of more than 200 governments and

800 NGOs, will vote on whether to recommend that forest communities be

granted a decisive role in negotiations. But previous attempts to pass

such non-binding declarations have failed, noted Marcus Colchester, of the Forest People's Programme. " As land pressures mount

and new rules are developed for mitigating climate change, recognition

of the rights of indigenous peoples to 'free, prior and informed

consent' is essential, " he said. " But we see more rhetoric than we see

real defense of the territories and rights, " he added, pointing out

that these principles are set forth in the UN Declaration on the

Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Forest leaders at the Congress detailed

ways in which their communities were buffeted by both conservation and

development forces.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5glLLMMXXQYkQsFFa6F6aKOTvIlPA

17) One of our top priorities will be to return to working to protect

tropical rainforests, as well as reviewing the long history of the old

growth campaign and commitments from companies such as Home Depot and

Lowe's. Another opportunity for forest protection is on the table at

the UN climate negotiations and RAN's team is accredited and ready to

go. What else do you think we could do? We welcome your thoughts and

input below. Above all, RAN's Old Growth campaign is committed to end

logging in ancient forests worldwide. As part of planning this new

phase for the campaign, RAN has begun undertaking a strategic review

of the Forest Stewardship Council's (FSC's) benefits and costs. The

credibility of the FSC continues to be threatened by controversies

with specific certifications, with contentious policies such as the

Controlled Wood Standard which operates much lower standard into than

the FSC itself, and with the volume of wood certified from old growth

forests. These controversies affect whether, and how much, RAN can

continue supporting the FSC. RAN staff will attend the FSC annual

meeting in November, we will report back our conclusions to our

members and supporters as well as through dialogue with other NGOs.

http://understory.ran.org/2008/10/06/rainforest-action-network%E2%80%99s-old-gro\

wth-campaign-is-entering-a-new-phase/#comment-250674

18) Another of FSC's longest-term NGO supporters, the San

Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network has added itself to the list

of NGOs expressing serious doubts about the FSC. In a new posting on

RAN's website, the organisation's Programme Director, Jennifer Krill,

states that the credibility of FSC " continues to be threatened " . Krill

specifically identifies the so-called Controlled Wood Standard as

being problematic, and hints that RAN might withdraw its support for

the organisation. " RAN's Old Growth [forests] campaign is committed to

end logging in ancient forests worldwide. As part of planning this new