The first is debated in international forums

The tree falling makes more noise than the forest that grows. "This proverb summarises well enough the low interest policy in forestry issues by the European Union or the United Nations, still recently in Poznan and Brussels these days.

Stressing the vital role of the forest that store the CO2 in the mitigation of climate change and the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG), the Commission announced implementation of a global mechanism for forest carbon Global Forest Carbon Mechanism (GFCM). The objective is to reward developing countries reduce their GHG emissions by financial assistance in combating deforestation and forest degradation. Deforestation, of the order of 13 million hectares per year, would be the source of 20 of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere.

This situation was already known in the negotiations of the Kyoto agreements in 1997, agreements which have totally marginalized the role of forests and excluded the wood, only material that stores CO2 and which is naturally renewable. So why not have accepted at the time an incentive procedure for reforestation with an award for the CO2 stored in wood to provide a value to the forest and thus encourage (profitable) forest management, thus the protection of primary forest.

Instead, ten years later, the Commission proposes a system akin to that of the "bonus to the dunce" by funding countries which until now have done nothing to prevent deforestation.

It should be noted, moreover, that the European Union did not wish to integrate European forests in the carbon credit procedures and the European Parliament has rejected all the amendments to this effect. It is therefore only when the forest disappears that politics is crying on her.

Another example also linked to deforestation, illegal wood trafficking. For the same reasons, the Commission wants to strengthen the control on the origin of these illegally cut timber (FLEGT procedure) and wishes to establish a settlement applied to all wood sold and negotiated the Union European. However remember, after the Rio Summit in 1990, that the NGOs with the same speech, the same arguments, the same reasons have launched the certification process of the sustainable management of forests to protect tropical forests, combat us deforestation and illegal logging wood. Today, in practice, this system applies in the "Western" forests and forest owners Europeans pay the certification of a management which was already regulated.

Is it really useful to penalize still more European forest owner because it is identifiable He would then be the opposite of the polluter-pays principle! Is this not a bad way for the Commission to afford a good political consciousness on the back of forest in Europe

Of course, we all agree to act against deforestation and illegal trafficking in wood which penalize everyone and especially the forest. It is a question of global interest. Must confront the real causes which are archiconnues with the necessary political courage: poverty and the absence of property. The first is debated in international forums. The second, it is most often obscured while it is the key to reducing poverty effectively. Indeed, it must have the courage to say that the deforestation occurs in "public" forests, i.e. in States whose property is undefined, where forests belong to everyone, i.e. to anyone responsible. And illegal logging of timber will continue or find a Manager (owner-vendor of the wood): as a sovereign State cannot be held responsible for such a situation, which, if it existed, would be necessarily "unbeknownst to her", and it will undertake to find and punish the guilty... As many heard!

Once more, and despite statements indicating all the roles positive of the forest and wood, they were not successful and valued in the EU climate package or Poznan. Or it does not protect that which has the value.