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afrol.com, 20 July - A new report released yesterday by the World Resources Institute (WRI) recommends that the leaders of the world's richest countries end government subsidies which are destroying the earth's remaining frontier forests and harming their economies. In the report, WRI estimates that in Canada alone the government wastes at least US$2 billion a year subsidizing logging industry activities that are environmentally and economically damaging. The United States is not much better. The U.S. government lost over US$2 billion from 1992-97 on sales of timber from national forests. In Japan, subsidies pay for the processing of timber imported from the frontier forests of Siberia, Canada and Southeast Asia, some of which is probably cut illegally. France is particularly active in Africa's Congo Basin, second only to the Amazon in the size of its tropical rainforest. Through the French Development Agency and similar agencies, France is estimated to have spent about US$500 million from 1989-99 in building roads and other infrastructure in Central Africa that benefited logging companies. "G8 governments continue to be hypocrites when it comes to forests. Despite commitments they made in 1998, their perverse subsidies continue to fuel the destruction of the world's remaining ancient forests," said Dr. Nigel Sizer, principal author of the report, Perverse habits: The G8 and subsidies that harm forests and economies. The Group of Eight (G8) is made up of Japan, France, the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada and Russia. Foreign ministers from these countries recently issued a report describing how the 1998 G8 Action Program on Forests is being implemented and affirming the importance of promoting effective international cooperation on forest issues. The G8 leaders, including President Clinton, will likely endorse the report during their July 21-23, 2000 summit in Okinawa, Japan. A final report will be published in 2002, four years after G8 leaders first committed to halt global forest destruction. "The G8 report reads like a laundry list and continues to ignore logging industry subsidies," said Dr. Sizer.
"The structure of these subsidies is so complex that the public does not often appreciate their scale or call for their removal," said Dr. Sizer. "The preliminary results of our research show that this is a serious problem and should be a priority for concerted action by the G8." The WRI report, published with the support of Greenpeace International, points to Canada, Japan and the United States as the leading providers of subsidies that destroy the world's remaining frontier forests. Among the European members of the G8, France stands out as the only government with direct investments in logging companies. In Okinawa, Japan - where the G8 Summit will be held - the government has financed projects in the Yanbaru area that have led to the clearing of large tracts of this unique sub-tropical forest. Activities that are most harmful include building large roads through the forest that primarily serve to generate work for Japanese construction companies. In 1997, the U.S. Forest Service proposed a ten-year plan to build 1,100 miles of new roads to open up 85,000 acres for logging in the globally unique Tongass National Forest in Alaska. This, despite a loss of US$33 million on timber sales from the Tongass in that year alone. The WRI report recommends that the G8 establish an independent external commission to conduct a rigorous investigation of government subsidies that promote forest destruction. It also asks that the G8 countries, especially Canada, the United States, France and Japan commit to eliminating such subsidies by 2005. The full WRI report Perverse habits: The G8 and subsidies that harm forests and economies can be downloaded from the WRI's website (pdf format).
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The WRI report notes that perverse subsidies are those that cause forest loss or degradation and have no lasting positive impact on economic development. Local communities and society in general bear the costs of these subsidies while companies reap the benefits.
