Environmental groups have implied that the international trade in tropical timber is a major cause of tropical deforestation and that bans and boycotts of these species would contribute to the solution of this problem. The facts however do not support this argument.

Progress in tropical forest management

The first point to consider is that blanket bans and boycotts of tropical timber products would fail to recognize the progress being made by tropical countries, often under difficult economic and demographic conditions, in their efforts to introduce sustainable forest management practices.

Ghana, for instance, provides a good illustration of how tropical forests can be managed to ensure a long term supply of timber. It has a National Forest Plan plus legally defined forest reserves which are set aside specifically for industrial timber production. Extraction is strictly controlled and detailed inventories kept to ensure only the 'right' trees are felled. In 1996, the Ghanaian Government extended and strengthened forestry regulations to ensure control of timber extraction in forest areas outside the forest reserves.

All the major tropical timber producing countries are members of the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) and have committed themselves to ensuring all their internationally-traded tropical timber comes from sustainably managed forests by the year 2000. Objective 2000 is supported by Governments of both timber producers and users and can mobilize the technical and financial resources needed to achieve this goal. A mid-term review of progress towards this target, carried out by ITTO in 1995, concluded that the UK's three major suppliers of tropical hardwood, Malaysia, Indonesia and Ghana, were 'on track' to meet this target.

We therefore believe it is counter-productive to discriminate against timber simply because it derives from a tropical developing country.

A second important fact is that there is no evidence to suggest that bans or boycotts on tropical timber products would counter the process of deforestation. In fact, where objective research has been carried out, it has tended to suggest the opposite view - that trade interventions would increase deforestation.

Indeed, the World Bank and the London Environmental Economic Centre (LEEC) have concluded that trade restrictions on tropical hardwood would be counter productive.

The LEEC report examines how the tropical timber trade affects deforestation. It states that trade interventions such as bans, taxes and quantitative restrictions may reduce rather than increase the incentives for sustainable timber management. In this way trade interventions may actually increase overall tropical deforestation.