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The International Tropical Timber Agreement

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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

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