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14 Rev. Eur. Comp. & Int'l Envtl. L. [iii] (2005)

handle is hein.journals/reel14 and id is 1 raw text is: RECIEL 14 (1) 2005. ISSN 0962 8797 Editorial The landscape of international forests regimes is in a state of change. The 5-year mandate given to the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) comes to an end in May, the Kyoto Protocol and its provisions on land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) came into force in February, the second and final extension of the mandate of the International Tropical Timber Agreement 1994 (ITTA 1994) comes to an end in December 2006 - and negotiations of its successor agreement are in mid-stride - and new processes such as those regarding forest law enforcement and governance and forest landscape restoration are growing and making advancing steps forward. This issue of RECIEL examines some of the changes, challenges, and developments in these forests regimes. David Humphreys analyses international discussions over the past 13 years on the desirability of a forests convention. He reviews the possible advantages and disadvantages of a convention, explains the position- ing of States around issues of, inter alia, forest manage- ment standards, finance and technology transfer, sovereignty, and forest industry demands, discusses the forms which a forests convention could take, and analyses progress since the 1992 Rio Earth Sum- mit. He concludes that in order for a forests conven- tion to be agreed, developed States must be prepared to commit additional overseas development assistance to tropical forests and that key consumer and pro- ducer States must support the treaty. However, he notes that there is no evidence to suggest that donors of aid and/or key actors are prepared to change posi- tion and that a major shift in the international climate of forest politics is unlikely. He states that the pattern since the Rio Earth Summit has been to create forests policy institutions with a fixed life span and that this is likely to continue. Patrick Graichen analyses the negotiations under the Kyoto Protocol regime regarding whether and how changes in carbon stocks should be accounted for within the Kyoto framework. He examines the issues of, inter alia, scale, non-permanence, uncertainty and credibility, and whether CO2 removals by sinks in developing countries should generate credits to be used within the Kyoto emissions trading regime. Graichen reviews how sinks are addressed under the Protocol, the regime's rules that govern LULUCF projects in developing countries, the regime's rules that govern LULUCF projects in developed countries, and the means for incorporating credits from projects into the EU emissions trading scheme. He states that whether or not Kyoto forests projects are successful will depend on the market price of carbon, the importance given to socio-economic and environmental effects, and institutional design issues arising from inherent liability problems surrounding the issue of including non-permanent sinks credits. Lauren Flejzor explains the historical development of the international tropical timber regime, examines why new issues are being proposed for inclusion under the successor agreement to the ITTA 1994, and analyzes the constraints of operationalizing the ITTA using the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO). Examining emerging issues under a successor agreement, Flejzor describes discussions on the scope of a new agreement in terms of non-coniferous forests, trade in non-timber forest products, non-timber forest values, and ecosystem services. She then reviews the financing options for new and existing ITTO activities and the viability of a successor agreement and its pos- sible focus on poverty alleviation efforts and project implementation. She concludes that Member States will need to take concrete actions to decide how specific emerging issues in the timber market can help promote sustainable livelihoods and build capacity at the national level, while harnessing the required finan- cial resources to effectively implement a successor agreement to the ITTA 1994. Duncan Brack examines in his article the efforts of the EU, through its Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative, to try to exclude illegal products from its imports and to build markets for verifiably legal products. He reviews the background to the problems of illegal logging, examines inter- national initiatives that have been undertaken to address these problems, and analyses the FLEGT Action Plan focusing on, inter alia, a licensing system to exclude illegal timber, legislative reform, development coopera- tion, finance and investment, and building markets for legal products. Brack concludes that despite several constraints, including its vulnerability to evasion and uncertainty regarding how many countries are likely to sign up, the FLEGT initiative addresses a growing and urgent problem that no other combination of policies and measures has been able to tackle effectively. Carole Saint-Laurent reviews the emerging inter- national focus on forest landscape restoration activities. She describes the key characteristics of forest landscape restoration, highlights the importance of issues related to forests and forest ecosystems to the Rio conventions, @ Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Maiden, MA 02148, USA. Ill

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