NGO
and IPO statement at CBD's SBSTTA 7
Montreal, Canada
November 2001
The following is a
joint NGO and Indigenous Peoples' Organizations (IPOs) statement
made at the 7th meeting of the Subsidiary Bodies for
Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) of the
Convention on Biodiversity (CBD)
which took place in Montreal, Canada (November 12-16, 2001).
My name is Ricardo Carrere,
from the World Rainforest Movement, and I am speaking on behalf
of the Global Forest Coalition and other NGOs and IPOs present at
this meeting.
I would like to begin
by expressing that we have many expectations regarding the outcome
of this meeting. We believe this scientific body should take the
lead in providing advice on effective actions to implement the objectives
of the Convention on the forest biome that harbours more than 60%
of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity. We sincerely hope that
government delegates share this enthusiasm and that this meeting
will result in concrete actions to address forest biodiversity loss.
Our expectations are
in line with a sense of urgency resulting from what is happening
to the world’s forests and to their biodiversity, with few or no
exceptions. In some cases, the problem is large scale commercial
logging. In others, forest biodiversity is being affected by oil,
gas and mineral exploitation, or by shrimp farming, or by conversion
to agriculture, cattle raising, pulpwood or oil palm plantations.
Yet in others, forest stands are being simplified to produce a narrow
range of commercially valuable products.
Many of those processes
are resulting in increased poverty, evictions and human rights abuses.
And in all of them there is biodiversity loss.
The solutions to all
those problems are difficult, but solutions need to be found. The
misuse of the concept of state sovereignty must not be a justification
to override local sovereignty and local peoples’ rights by destroying
their forests, their livelihoods and the biodiversity contained
in their forests.
We hope that the CBD
and particularly this Scientific Body meeting will be able to take
the lead in a number of issues, among which we would like to highlight
two which we believe are of crucial importance:
The first one has to
do with the definition of forests. It is definitely not useful that
large scale alien tree monocultures, which are themselves both a
direct and an indirect cause of biodiversity loss, be considered
by the CBD as being equivalent to forests. Plantations cannot be
included at any point of the continuum of forest evolution. They
are clearly not forests. Plantations of all types should be considered
as a form of cultivation and at the same time the CBD should ensure
that plantations never cause forest or other ecosystem biodiversity
loss.
The second issue we would
like to highlight is the need to address the underlying causes of
deforestation and forest degradation, because unless those underlying
causes are addressed, forest biodiversity will continue to decrease.
Many of those causes are of a global nature and need to be addressed
at that level, while others are country specific. Measures to address
both sets of underlying causes should be high on the agenda and
concrete actions need to be urgently implemented at the global and
national levels. There is sufficient research on this matter to
begin to take action, so a strong work programme should now be drawn
up. We are greatly concerned that some of the documentation prepared
for this meeting still reflects the old viewpoint that poverty and
population growth are the main causes, in spite of the fact that
more recent research has proven that this is usually not the case.
Finally, we would like to stress that
concrete action implies establishing targets, timeframes and relevant
actors to be involved, and that it would require, as a minimum,
obligatory reporting on these targets. Therefore, we urge governments
to move swiftly into a substantive debate on an ambitious work programme
on forests, using the best elements of all relevant background documents.
The whole world knows, as all of us do at this meeting, that unless
something is done -and fast- to halt deforestation and forest degradation,
forest biodiversity will reach a critical point of no return. We
sincerely hope that this meeting and the next Conference of the
Parties of the CBD will provide the necessary leadership to halt
this destructive process. Thank you.
