The International Tropical Timber Agreement
Introduction
The International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA), established in Geneva from 1993 to 1994, was designed to ensure multi-national agreement and cooperation towards the ‘management, conservation, and sustainable development of all types of forests’ (United Nations, 1994), located between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer (United Nations, 1994). The participants were classified into timber producers and consumers. (Stevenson, 2006) The majority of which were developing nations in Latin America, Africa and Asia (Stevenson, 2006). The remaining producers included developed nations in North America and Europe (Brown Weiss, 1998). Together, 61 countries from all continents were participants in the agreement, including the European Union, Canada, the United States, and China (United Nations, 1994)
Importance of International Cooperation
International cooperation is necessary to efficiently manage tropical timber as sustainably and environmentally sound as possible. Therefore, agreements are designed to handle concerns that simply cannot be managed alone such as our world’s tropical forests (Chirchi and Mitchell [n.d]).
Likewise, each country can learn from one another and understand the steps it takes to properly take action and better the future of tropical timber practices. The agreement cannot work if a small amount of states are solely included, because all nations and states should be responsible for the well
In particular, forest fragmentation issues were not involved in the processes of legislation. To date, a well-defined tenure or ownership has not been available for those collective forests in southern China, and an overloaded forest-related taxation still exists for forest farmers. This has heavily undermined the afforestation initiatives available to forest farmers (Zhang, 2008). In contrast, the USA has pushed many favorable policies, including an adoption of taxation incentive packages to encourage citizens to manage forests. A comprehensive system of laws related to forest management has dramatically advanced forest management levels and led to an overall forest inventory regularly. Beside governmental supports, various NGO’s pay much attention to forest fragmentation issues when management plans are being developed. (Li, Mao, Zhou, Vogelmann, Zhu,2010)
Brazil’s rainforests and America’s rainforests are great examples of the negative effect that deforestation has on these specific areas. One of the rising challenges in our rapidly growing world is the destruction of rainforests and how it is slowly ruining the world that we live in. Deforestation has a lot of destructive impacts on the environment that is surrounding us, one of the most important being its effect on the climate. The fast rise in the world’s population, calling for high demand of resources, is only hastening the effects of deforestation, which can hopefully be put an end to through the enforcement of a handful of simple, key, and sustainable solutions.
International law has relatively little relevance for environmental law, the standard of justice revolves around the advancement of peace and respect for basic human rights. The absence of mechanisms under international law does not seem to be unjust, as it does not impinge on international peace and security or the enjoyment of human rights, at least not directly. A wide variety of positions on global justice and fairness support normative obligations for outsiders to compensate rainforest states for protecting their forests, obligations that may well have to be translated into binding law. International law should take into account, much more than is now the case, positive obligations of international solidarity, including the protection of the global commons.
This document compares and contrasts three future views on timber supply in the southern region of the US as projected by three third-party forecasting service providers – Forest Economic Advisors (FEA), Resource Information Systems Inc. (RISI), and Forisk. All three forecasts lean heavily on data from the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) National Program and Resource Planning Assessments (RPAs) in their projections. In addition, Forisk explicitly breaks down softwood growing stock inventory into pulp, CNS, and sawtimber inventories whereas FEA and RISI are explicit only about sawtimeber and overall softwood growing stock inventories. This further complicates the comparison among the three providers but allows us to gain some insights on the relative shares of the three above components of timber inventory in the South as projected by Forisk.
However, due to more people searching for plots there is greater pressure on the amount of available land. The logging industry is responsible for a relatively small level of deforestation, accounting for 3% in Brazil. Consequently, all these activity contribute together to the rapid loss of what is left of the rainforest and a large proportion of the world’s biodiversity. All of the resources that the rainforest provides could be lost in the next 40 years.
Deforestation is defined as: “the clearing of virgin forests, or intentional destruction or removal of trees and other vegetation for agricultural, commercial, housing, or firewood use without replanting and without allowing time for the forest to regenerate itself” (SCRIBD). Deforestation has been a problem in Latin America since the early 1900s and the severity of the dilemma is increasing rapidly. Deforestation not only has consequences for the environment, but also, the indigenous people and the national economy. The logging industry in Latin America is often exploited by multinational companies that are not properly regulated. The land that has provided a home and cultivated indigenous development for centuries is being dissipated rapidly. Due to an exponentially growing global population, there is an increased demand for low priced goods--like timber, crops, and meat. Many Latin American countries value revenue from selling these goods over the health of their local ecosystems. The crisis of deforestation and habitat loss is shifting from a local to global problem. As deforestation continues, global warming escalates worldwide, impacting every country and person. About 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from tropical deforestation, which is more than from all the world’s cars, trucks and buses combined (Schwartzman). Puerto Rico and Brazil provide contrasting examples of the impact of deforestation. Puerto Rico had an economic and environmental shift
The tropical rainforest is home to a great variety of plants, trees, flowers, animals, birds, insects, and reptiles. Due to the great variety, there are groups that are interested in the tropical rainforest like rubber tapers, farmers, cattle ranchers, and loggers. the issue is that there are so many different things that each group want to do with the Amazon rainforest and no one knows who should have the rainforest. The rubber tappers have lived in the Amazon rainforest for many generations and they collect the sap from rubber trees that grow in the Amazon rainforest. Cattle ranchers already own a small part of the Amazon rainforest. The loggers want the wood from the trees to make buildings such as hospitals and important office buildings.
Three to six billion trees are cut down each and every year! Deforestation is a huge problem in the rainforests. Because these forests are home to much of the Earth’s species of life. Covering 30 percent of our land forests provide homes, protection, and oxygen for humans and other wildlife in the forests. There are 7.125 billion people that count on the benefits provided by the forest, which is: food, clothing, traditional medicine and shelter. If something isn 't done soon to reduce our carbon footprint, we will not have forests of any type to soak up the carbon dioxide(CO2) in the atmosphere.
In her article for the Los Angeles Times, Neela Banerjee informed how the United States cares about decreasing the amount of deforestation. “To launch a global initiative to reduce deforestation sharply over the next 15 years.” In 15 years the United States and other nation are planning to stop the amount of deforestation. Other nations including the United States want the world to have a better environment. In her article. “U.S. joins other nation in deforestation accord at UN Summit.”(2014), Neela Banerjee explains that the United States has join groups to reduce deforestation. Banerjee develops her argument by using the following qualitative according to variety, in order to inform people about deforestation. Her purpose is to tell which nations are participating to help reduce deforestation. She introduces other nation beside the United State that are helping minimize
From 1990 to 2005, deforestation, or the removal of trees, was happening at an average rate of 13 million hectares (32.11 million acres) per year (Hope 247). In many ways, deforestation has been the reason for great economic success which turns people on to the idea even more. Deforestation is an essential element in promoting and encouraging developmental growth. Some places around the world may feel obligated to resort to deforestation due to population increases around the world. The concept of deforestation may seem to have a positive impact on society, but many people fail to consider the importance of replanting the trees that were harvested and removed. Deforestation mainly affects North and South America, but because of the Transamazon
At first there was concern only among foresters about deforestation but now the public has created organizations such as Green Peace to facilitate increased awareness and reduce deforestation. The Food and Agriculture Organization (F.A.O.) has worked mainly within the forestry community to find new and better ways to manage the forests. In 1985 there was the introduction of the Tropical Forestry Action Plan or T.F.A.P. This plan involved the F.A.O, United Nations, World Bank, other developmental agencies, and several other multi-national government organizations; together they developed a new strategy. More than sixty countries have decided to prepare national forestry action plans to manage their forests (Gallant, 381).
Rainforests have been declining rapidly over the last few decades. There are various factors responsible for this decline, resulting in serious impacts on the environment and the economy. Critically discuss the causes of deforestation and solutions to it.
I am appealing to you as a conservationist. I believe that the natural resources of the forest can be of great help to us. As we experience this oil and gas crisis in the US, we are forced to import oil from foreign countries. Thus causing the cost of
The restriction to the local people for the use of forest products and timber logging can increase the demand for these products and market value. The control of the deforestation and degradation in REDD+ site increases the agricultural land crisis and demand for the land. Studies indicate that cross-border leakage is a major problem in many areas. In Vietnam between 1987 and 2006, about 39% of the forest cover was recovered, which was balanced by the forest loss in the neighboring countries including Lao PDR, Cambodia, and Indonesia (Barlow, et. al., 2012). The conservation or restoration project in the REDD+ areas without considering the immediate or underlying causes of forest loss can be more prone to leakage (Miles and Dickson, 2010) causing deforestation elsewhere to meet the demand for agricultural products and forest needs (Barlow, et. al., 2012).
The rate of deforestation is increasing and the tropical forests are falling at approximately 140,000 acres per day (Miller & Tangley 1991: xvi). The forests are crucial to the environment. They are important in minimizing erosion, providing a stable habitat for many animals, and helping to keep the environment clean. Deforestation has devastating effects, not only on the biological dependents within the depleted forests, but also on the surrounding human-populated communities.