KEEPING THE
PROMISE
The Need for Compliance with Forest
Policy
"The worst diplomatic exercise ever."
This is what an experienced South American
diplomat once called the Intergovernmental
Forum on Forests (IFF). This UN body met
from 1997 to 2000, and had as its main
mandate the promotion of the implementation
of the 135 agreed Proposals for Action of
its predecessor, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Forests (IPF). A number of
countries, as well as NGOs and Indigenous
Peoples’ Organizations (IPOs), undertook
some worthwhile attempts to fulfill this
mandate, either by analyzing the
implementation of these Action Proposals in
their own countries (the so-called Six
Country Initiative) or by implementing the
proposals themselves. However, the IFF
either ignored the outcomes of these
processes or watered them down so much that
they drowned in vagueness.
The main recommendation of the Six
Country Initiative, for example, was that
every country should have a national forest
programme; however, the IFF defined
"national forest programme" so as to
include everything under the sun. The IFF
outcome is so vague that there is no
obligation for a given country to address
issues like respect for land rights, forest
destruction or human rights offenses in its
forest programme. Even worse, a country
need not even
have
forests within
its territory to take part. Greenland and
Saudi Arabia, to name two more or less
treeless countries, can now
enthusiastically claim that they have
national forest programmes!
Forest Convention
Frustrations
One reason for the failure of the IFF
process can be found in the exasperating
battle about a new Forest Convention, a
debate that has lingered on since the
beginning of the 1990s. Large
timber-exporting nations, hoping to prevent
other countries from boycotting
unsustainably produced timber, tried to
start up negotiations on a Forest
Convention. They also wanted to ensure that
forest policy remained under the auspices
of forestry departments at the national
level. The alternative, elaborating and
strengthening forest policy under the
Biodiversity Convention, would have brought
forest policy under the domain of nature
conservation ministries.
The great majority of NGOs and IPOs, as
well as many countries, opposed a new
Forest Convention as they felt it would
distract attention from the implementation
of the existing Proposals for Action and
the numerous other existing instruments in
the field of forests. The result was that
the C-word secretly or openly undermined
every single debate in the IFF. In the end,
the pro-Convention countries lost the
battle and the IFF did not establish a
negotiating committee for a Forest
Convention. However, it did decide to
establish a permanent UN Forum on Forests
(UNFF), which looks an awful lot like the
IFF itself. Needless to say, few NGOs, IPOs
or UN agencies are enthusiastic about the
establishment of this permanent forest
forum. Why reinvent a wheel that has proven
not to work?
IFF Falters
So what was wrong with the IFF? As stated
before, the Convention battle frustrated a
lot of the substantive debate. It has even
been suggested that certain countries had a
strong interest in the lack of progress in
both the analysis of outstanding
forest-related issues and the
implementation of the IPF Action Proposals,
as such progress would undermine the
argument that only a Convention could save
the world's forests.
Moreover, it is erroneous to believe
that a forum would be the most appropriate
institution to promote the implementation
of existing commitments. A forum is, per
definition, a talk shop. United Nations
talk shops can be useful, but only in those
exceptional cases when an entirely new
issue is introduced at the
intergovernmental level and country
delegations need a few relatively informal
occasions to exchange ideas and information
about the issue. The promotion of
implementation, however, requires a
completely different process.
Why Compliance is Needed
The most effective institution for
promoting implementation is a system of
obligatory reporting by countries, in
combination with a compliance mechanism.
Compliance mechanisms can be found in a
number of conventions. They basically
consist of a more or less independent
committee of some 15 persons from different
countries. The committee receives
notifications from governments, NGOs or
IPOs that a country is not able to
implement its commitments, and subsequently
analyzes the case and makes recommendations
for how to best assist the country at stake
so that it can comply with its commitments.
For example, it may recommend that the
country needs more funding, or better
technology. In more powerful compliance
mechanisms, like that of the World Trade
Organization, the committee can also impose
sanctions, although it should be noted that
these sanctions often affect only those
economically less powerful countries.
Independent Monitoring
Reports
Meanwhile, reports from the compliance
mechanism itself can form an important
political incentive for countries to
implement their obligations. Even more
effective is the combination of such a
formal system with the publication, by
independent entities like NGOs and IPOs, of
independent monitoring reports on the
implementation of existing commitments. A
large group of NGOs and IPOs published
independent monitoring reports like these
in April 2000, and the publication of such
reports will form one of the main
activities of the newly established Global
Forest Coalition. FoEI, the World
Rainforest Movement, and some 15 other NGOs
and IPOs founded this coalition in order to
facilitate the effective participation of
southern NGOs and IPOs in intergovernmental
policy fora related to forests. The
independent monitoring reports will focus
on the implementation of the main existing
commitments in the field of forests; that
is, not only the IPF’s Proposals for
Action, but also the principles and
decisions of the Convention on Biodiversity
and its Conference of the Parties. After
all, forests are an ecosystem and they are
thus fully covered by this legally binding,
existing forest convention.
Failing to comply is a major disease in
international forest policy. Forests tend
to be located in remote areas, making it
difficult to monitor the implementation of
national and international law. This is why
illegal logging, serious human rights
offenses in forest areas, and uncontrolled
forest fires are so hard to address. But
the foresters dominating the international
forest debate seem to be less interested in
forests than they are in ensuring financial
and other resources for the forestry
sector. Thus, when the World Bank failed to
comply with its 1991 Forest Policy (see
LINK 94, page 14), it spent an amazing
amount of money and effort to weaken its
policy to favour the forestry industry
instead of ensuring that Bank staff
complied with the rules. When the parties
to the Climate Convention failed to comply
with the original Framework Convention,
including its obligation to protect and
enhance forests and to provide new and
additional funds for such activities, they
decided to merge the interests of the
forestry sector with those of oil
companies. They are thus trying to set up
plantation promotion schemes to release
industrialized countries from their
obligations to reduce CO2 emissions. And
when countries failed to comply with the
Biodiversity Convention, they successfully
downplayed and ignored it by setting up a
parallel talk shop called the IPF-IFF-UNFF
process.
Enforce Those Laws!
Is there hope for forests and forest
peoples in the coming century? Well, the
good news is that the laws are in place.
Most activities leading to forest
destruction and most offenses to the rights
of forest peoples are illegal from
international and even national points of
view. The challenge is to monitor these
crimes, report them, and ensure that they
are addressed. Both the above-mentioned
monitoring reports and a compliance
mechanism would be useful tools in this
respect. The one positive outcome of the
climate change negotiations might be that
compliance, and the need for compliance
mechanisms, is finally being taken
seriously. Hopefully, this will inspire the
negotiators currently struggling to set up
a potential new UN Failure on Forests.
Simone Lovera, FoE Paraguay
