ITTC Former President His Excellency Dr Bharat Jagdeo delivered the feature address at the opening of the 50th Session of the International Tropical Timber Council (ITTC), November 3; Yokohama, Japan. Speaking to representatives from sixty nine (69) tropical timber producer and consumer countries, Dr Jagdeo congratulated the organization on the impressive successes achieved over the past decades in creating effective synergies amongst member countries especially in the areas of forest biodiversity protection, implementation of sustainable forest management (SFM) social forestry policies, and trade in legal timber. The Former President however emphasized that for ITTO to continue being relevant, it had to refocus on other important non-timber trade opportunities such as forest carbon and other environmental services, whilst continuing to build on the already strong foundations of SFM, legality and timber trade. In this regard, he highlighted the crucial relationship that forests play in climate change mitigation, and the ambitious targets set by the international community to contain global warming. These targets would necessitate the developed countries to either make significant investments to meet their targets, or to look for other less expensive solutions. His Excellency reminded the meeting that both the Stern review and the McKinsey report identified Forests as the lowest cost abatement solution for achieving this targets. He also noted that in view of the promising progress has been made at recent international negotiations (IPCC, REDD+, UN Climate Summit etc.), ITTO needed to reposition itself to take greater advantage of the additional and potentially more lucrative trade opportunities that these will bring. Dr Jagdeo also highlighted that functional models for trade in forest carbon already exist such as the one between the Government of Guyana and the Kingdom of Norway; Guyana has already earned US$ 150 M over the past 4 years for its forest carbon services. He stressed that this was not at the expense of the sustainable timber trade, but complementary to it. The additional monies earned from the forest carbon services go to fund agreed social developmental activities, and projects identified under Guyanas Low Carbon implementation activities. One such activity was the development of a hydroelectric power generation facility which will completely remove Guyanas dependence on fossil fuels. Additional benefits include the formulation of a world class MRV system and significant capacity building of Government staff, private sector employees and civil society in general. Similar models are also operational in Brazil and Indonesia. In conclusion, His Excellency Dr Jagdeo again congratulated ITTO for the great advances already made, but reiterated the need to refocus more on other opportunities complementary to the tropical timber trade such as forest carbon and the other forest environmental services. He also cautioned that for ITTO to remain relevant, it must be aligned to the realties and opportunities arising out of the climate negotiations-, reminding that forests present the lowest cost abatement solution. Dr Jagdeo expressed sincere wishes for a productive Council Session.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 13:44:39 +0000
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