Forest protection

European Commission has introduced a set of laws for forest protection and against tropical deforestation. Between those a legislative proposal aiming to reduce the risk of an entry of illegal timber in the European market, plus a communication illustrating the Commission’s proposals to fight tropical deforestation.
It is presently estimated that 19% of imported timber in the Community comes from illegal sources, which favour climatic changes and biodiversity reduction in the forests.
The legislative proposal of the Commission will force the traders to take responsability about the origin of timber, finding the guarantees that timber and wood products have been obtained following the laws of their country of origin. Moreover, incentives for legal and sustainable use and commerce of forestal resources are scheduled for the developing countries.
The Commission highlights that forests are disappearing with a pace of about 13 millions hectares for year and deforestation is responsible for almost 20% of global greenhouse gases emissions. The Commission proposes therefore to pursue the goal to stop the loss of the planet forest coverage at the latest within 2030 and to reduce the gross tropical deforestation at least of 50% within 2020.
The Commission intends to favour, in the frame of the international negotiations on climatic changes, the creation of a Global Forest Carbon Mechanism (GFCM), through which developing countries could be rewarded for emission reductions coming from those measures which reduce deforestation and forest degradation. Underlined is also the need to have an integrated approach to forest policies taking measures which can reduce deforestation also in an indirect way. Different sectors and policies, like trade, energy, agriculture, food safety, cooperation for development, can play a significant role to preserve the Earth’s forests.

On this topic ISPRA organized a Workshop in June, 2008
Commission Communication
Legislative proposal