Speech by Mrs. Danuta HÜBNER
United Nations Under-Secretary-General,
Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe
to the UNECE Timber Committee,
Geneva, 3 October 2001
Mr. Chairman, Mr. El-Lakany, Ladies and Gentlemen
It is a pleasure for me to address the fifty-ninth session of
the Timber Committee. Your Committee is one of the oldest of all ECE Committees,
but has nevertheless been able to adapt and renew itself over the 53 years of
its existence. It is a particular pleasure for me to address you in the company
of the leader of the FAO Forestry Department who have been our partners
throughout the whole period.
This year’s session is special in many ways: in particular,
it marks the culmination of a process of strategic review of the whole
integrated programme of work of the Timber Committee and its sister body, the
FAO European Forestry Commission. The programme was reviewed in the light of
comments and suggestions, not only from governments but from a wide range of
partners and stakeholders, to ensure that its strategic objectives truly reflect
countries’ priorities and the needs of our constituents. The review also
sought to ensure that its methods were effective and efficient, making the best
possible use of the synergies with our partners. The work areas were
prioritised. The "governance" of the programme, by which I mean the
way in which the programme is formulated, reviewed and implemented was carefully
reviewed and slightly modified. The roles of the respective levels such as PSB,
bureau, working parties and teams, were clarified and streamlined. A major role
of guiding and monitoring implementation of the programme has been given to your
bureau and the bureau of the EFC. You discussed and endorsed these conclusions
yesterday, and I believe they will lay a firm foundation for the work over the
next four years.
The presence of Mr. El-Lakany here today is a symbol of a
dimension of ECE’s work which is becoming ever more important: our role in
providing regional input to global efforts, articulating the regional voice and
ensuring the global events and actions satisfactorily incorporate the concerns
of ECE countries. We are proud of the way in which the ECE/FAO team here in
Geneva helped to develop definitions and methods for the global forest resource
assessment, mobilised the professional community in our region and produced a
rich and transparent data set which served the needs both of our direct clients
in the region and of the global effort led by the FAO Forest Department, which
has been formally launched here today. I take this opportunity to restate ECE’s
long term commitment to continuing and deepening our productive partnership with
FAO in the field of forests and forest products. Following the October 2000
Joint Timber Committee and European Forestry Commission Session, the contacts
between the ECE and FAO have increased. For instance the Timber Section has
recently started to consult regularly with the partners in Rome through
video-conference, which should ensure even closer cooperation.
The picture of the ECE region’s forests which emerges from
the forest resource assessment work is generally positive, with nearly half the
world’s forests, including huge expanses of natural forest in Russia and
Canada. The forest area is expanding, harvests are well below growth, and there
are significant areas of protected and protective forests. Some of the largest
and most successful forest products companies are based in our region, although
these are by now truly global in their approach to issues, which contrasts with
the inevitably local nature of forest management. However, this should not limit
our understanding of the real problems facing our region:
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Fires burn hundreds of thousands of hectares every year
in southern Europe and millions of hectares in Russia and North America,
endangering already fragile ecosystems, as well as the lives and property of
rural communities and fire fighters;
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There is still widespread evidence of defoliation in
European forests, although the upward trend seems to have stopped: this
damage may be in part due to air-borne pollution but is still not well
enough understood;
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Many countries are still struggling to adapt their forest
sector institutions to social and economic circumstances which have changed
radically during the transition process. This group includes many of the
poorest countries in the region, whose forest administrations are seriously
under-funded and in need of help for capacity building. Another challenge in
several countries is how to help and guide the new private forest owners
emerging from the restitution-privatisation process, without infringing
their property rights. A recent workshop in my own country, Poland, reviewed
the situation in the countries in transition and identified major issues for
international concern.
Yesterday and today you are discussing the short-term
situation and outlook for forest products markets, the traditional core of the
Timber Committee sessions. This year, your deliberations and your final press
release will be even more eagerly awaited than usual, because of the extreme
uncertainty characterising current trends. Markets were already turning down in
spring and summer of this year, although housing construction held up better
than expected. The recent downturn in the stock markets and the advancing threat
of recession, exacerbated by the effects of the atrocity of 11 September can
only increase the apprehensions of market participants. I urge you to weigh the
situation carefully, and agree on a balanced and authoritative statement of the
outlook for the coming months.
Tomorrow, you will devote the morning to a topic which has
been much discussed at the level of the Commission itself: intersectoral
cooperation and how to draw all the benefit from the synergies to be found
between ECE’s PSBs. You will discuss possible future activities between
yourselves, and the sister committees responsible for Trade, Industry and
Enterprise Development, Environmental Policies and on Sustainable Energy, as
requested by the Commission in May. In fact this request from the Commission
coincides very well with the thinking of policy specialists for the forest
sector who now stress the importance of policies outside the sector, for
instance, regarding trade, environment and energy as having a greater influence
on the long term conditions of the sector than purely forest and timber policy
decisions. It is thus of great importance for you to be involved in the policy
formulation for many sectors, not only your own. I urge you to identify and
propose activities where ECE has a comparative advantage and the likelihood of
attracting sufficient resources to build on ECE’s unique multi-sectoral
structure, and make a special contribution to the ever more complex questions
shaping the trade and environment debate.
Last week the Regional Ministerial Meeting for the World
Summit on Sustainable Development approved a Ministerial Declaration which
included a reference to forest sector policy, and I know you contribute, through
FAO, to the work of the UN Forum on Forests. I am glad that the ECE can in this
intersectoral way help to articulate a regional viewpoint on global issues and
thus contribute to achieving global UN objectives.
Another item given priority by the Commission was the
mainstreaming of the gender issue, and I welcome the holding of the productive
seminar on the role of women in forestry earlier in 2001, which identified the
main issues in the sector.
Finally, you are also discussing your Committee’s role in
the international forest dialogue, at the global and regional level. You are
making a significant contribution to the UN Forum on Forests, mostly through the
FAO which chairs the Collaborative Partnership on Forests. At the regional
level, another productive partnership is being constructed, with the Ministerial
Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe: synergies have been found in
many areas including participation in forest decision making, indicators of
sustainable forest management, protected and protective forest areas and so on.
We hope also our analysis of the long term outlook for the sector will help in
the preparation of the Ministers’ conference in Vienna in 2003. We are
convinced that this is a partnership of great mutual benefit to the Ministerial
conference and to ECE.
I now leave the floor to Mr. El-Lakany to present the results
of the latest publication on the State of the World’s Forests 2001. I wish you
success in your deliberations.