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FROM VOLUME 6, NUMBER 5, MAY 1993

NEWS...
NEWS NOTES: TROPICAL TIMBER

Item #d93may96

In a week-long meeting in April, tropical timber producers and consumers failed to draft a new agreement, disagreeing on issues of finance, alleged trade discrimination, and the future of the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO). The current agreement, designed to balance trade with environmental concerns, expires in March, 1994. (Intl. Environ. Rptr., p. 285, Apr. 21)

A British government proposal for identifying endangered species in tropical forests was rejected at a March ITTO workshop attended by scientists and timber traders in Cambridge, England. The decision is a serious setback for Western governments that have argued that the ITTO, a trade organization, can become a tool for saving tropical rainforests. (New Scientist, p. 11, Apr. 3)

The results of the most authoritative global tropical deforestation survey produced in more than a decade, presented at a March meeting of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, show that Amazon rainforests are being cleared at an alarming rate, but rainforests and other tropical forest types in some other regions are in an even more perilous state. (Science, p. 1390, Mar. 5)