Idioma principal del documento: Inglés


Resumen en Inglés: The impacts of illegal and destructive logging on wildlife and human welfare are devastating. As a major buyer and importer of illegal forest products, and with European timber companies heavily implicated in this trade, the European Union has a duty to curtail criminal activities and to ensure the legality of the products imported into its market. This report provides recommendations to EU policy makers to urgently address the imports of illegally sourced timber. The recommendations include the development of a new Regulation to outlaw the import of illegally sourced forest products into the European market. This Regulation must allow EU enforcement officials to seize illegally sourced forest products and prosecute those that trade in them. The report further concludes that the planned development of partnership agreements with producer countries, as part of the EU FLEGT process, provides a good opportunity to identify the legality of forest products and promote responsible forest management. A precondition to the success of these partnership agreements is a proper analysis of all existing forest-related laws, including trade, human rights and customary laws. This is needed as currently in many countries forestry legislation discriminates against the most vulnerable groups in society and is biased towards timber industry interests. The EU will therefore have to ensure that these partnership agreements are developed in a fair and transparent manner, with the prior and informed consent of all stakeholders, particularly indigenous peoples and local communities. In the interim, national and EU policies and legislation should be strengthened and implemented to address the import of illegally sourced timber. These measures include CITES, money laundering and public procurement policies. All of these can be amended, enforced or implemented to capture some aspects of illegal and destructive forestry activities. If the European Union fails to take immediate action to shut down the market for illegal timber and to actively promote responsible forest management and forestry reform, illegal and destructive logging will continue and the world’s lasts forests will disappear forever.
Palabras clave en Inglés: illegal timber, illegal logging, import, European Union, EU, international framework, EU legislation, country timber procurment policies, EU partnership agreements, actions needed

Tipo: Librete/Folleto

Áreas temáticas: Ciencias Agrárias Desarr. Rural, Economía y Empresariales, Ciencias Políticas
Año de publicación/producción: 2004

Institución: FERN, Greenpeace, WWF

Referencia bibliográfica: Marijnissen, C., Ozinga, S., Richards, B. & Risso, S. (2004). Facing Reality - How to Halt the Import of Illegal Timber in the EU. FERN, Greenpeace, WWF.

Número de páginas: 36

Precio: 0 €

Formato: pdf

Tamaño: 0,707 Mbytes