Forests, people in PNG and NZ furniture industry will lose out in new illegal logging policy
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\nAuckland-11 December 2013– The Government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new policy will do virtually nothing to halt the importation of illegally logged timber coming into New Zealand, Greenpeace said today.<\/p>\n
The new policy, announced by Jim Anderton yesterday, is a slight shift from the status quo. The only new thing is that it is now mandatory for Government Departments to seek legally logged wood.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s good enough for Government Departments, why isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it good enough for the rest of the country?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d asked Grant Rosoman of Greenpeace.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The only way of stop illegal wood imports immediately would be straightforward regulation. This is a clear and simple answer and, like biosecurity controls, would have been relatively easily implemented,\u00e2\u20ac\u009dhe said.<\/p>\n
Instead, the Government will be tied up in bilateral arrangements which will take years to negotiate. The World Bank has warned that 80% of the wood coming from Indonesia and Papua New Guinea is illegal. Meanwhile, hardwood furniture products made from illegal hardwood like kwila are pouring in from China, undercutting New Zealand\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own sustainable furniture industry.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The biggest losers in this policy are the forests and peoples of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and the New Zealand furniture manufacturers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The Government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s two key arguments against regulation are bogus and are perhaps disguising the real issue \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that the Government doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to upset potential trade agreement partners like China. <><\/p>\n
The first bogus arguments is that illegally logged wood is impossible to define and assess for legality. <>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is rubbish \u00e2\u20ac\u201c this is already being done by the Forest Stewardship Council, the Tropical Forest Trust and others,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Rosoman.<\/p>\n
There would also be no breach of WTO rules \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so long as the legislation is implemented within New Zealand as well as on imports. Both Greenpeace and the FSC have legal opinions to support this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Forests, people in PNG and NZ furniture industry will lose out in new illegal logging policy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-furniture-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}