Strong legislation follows
ten year Greenpeace campaign
On this page Press release - July 7, 2010
Europe will finally close its doors to the
destructive illegal timber trade after agreeing
far-reaching new legislation.
The European Parliament today voted overwhelmingly
in favour of a law banning illegal timber
from one of the world’s biggest markets.
Europe uses huge volumes of illegal timber,
mainly from countries with weak governance
where corporate criminals and mafia gangs
cause great environmental damage, rob governments
of revenue and have even fuelled civil war.
This May, Greenpeace
took Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard
to the Democratic Republic of Congo to witness
the situation for herself. She said: “I’ve
seen how large-scale timber operations are
threatening the planet’s last intact forests.
They’re being eaten away from the inside.
This extraordinary ecosystem that supports
the lives of tens of millions of people
and is the planet’s second largest green
lung is in danger.”
Greenpeace EU forest
policy director, Sébastien Risso,
said: “This law hangs up a ‘closed for business’
sign to a destructive market. It promises
to level the playing field so legitimate
companies and customers are better able
to act sustainably.”
Apart from banning illegal
timber from the EU market, other significant
steps forward are a requirement on companies
in Europe to verify wood products thought
to be illegal and trace timber back to the
country of harvest. Offenders could be fined
in proportion to the environmental damage
and economic losses they cause. Regrettably,
member states opposed minimum penalties
and sanctions at EU level, printed materials
will be exempted for at least five years
and it will take two years before the new
law is applied.
Risso added: “Greenpeace
will be vigilant and ensure the law is effectively
enforced and companies stand by their obligations.
But more needs to be done to tackle the
EU’s destructive impact on the world’s forests.
Agriculture is the major cause of deforestation.
The goldrush into biofuels threatens to
exacerbate this. Without more strong measures
to tackle these issues, such as a robust
financing mechanism to support forest protection,
rainforests will soon be just a memory.”
A recent UN report found
that ancient forests worldwide have decreased
by an area the size of Germany and Denmark
put together, more than 40 million hectares,
since 2000 (1). To tackle climate change
we must end global deforestation by 2020.
A ten year Greenpeace
campaign
Since launching its
campaign to eliminate illegal logging a
decade ago, scores of Greenpeace activists
have put their lives at risk to blockade
ports, halt wood shipments and go undercover
to expose illegal logging in the Amazon,
Central Africa, Russia and South-East Asia.
Among the most important accomplishments
were Greenpeace investigations from 2000-2003
which uncovered some of the main European
timber traders paying for conflict timber
from Liberia and fuelling a civil war that
claimed over 250,000 lives. Undercover investigations
also revealed illegal wood being used in
the restoration of public buildings and
at the heart of government in the UK in
2002, 2003 and 2006, Spain in 2005 and the
European Union’s headquarters in Brussels
in 2004.
Notes
(1) UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), Global Forest Resource
Assessment 2010, Key findings, http://foris.fao.org/static/data/fra2010/KeyFindings-en.pdf
