Reduction or removal of tariff barriers and impediments to the provision of better market access and better prices for higher-value-added forest products and their local processing should be encouraged to enable producer countries to better conserve and manage their renewable forest resources.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is looking to expand trade in forest products at its Ministerial meeting in Seattle in November 1999. A proposed elimination of tariffs on forest products could encourage a massive increase in logging world-wide, putting an undue strain on US forests, and threatening the last old growth forests of the Amazon, Africa and Canada with fast-track destruction.
Many environmental protection measures aimed at sustainable forestry practices, such as timber trade regulations, forest management standards, restrictions on pest-infested log imports and building codes that protect domestic industry by discouraging the use of imported materials like wood, can be argued to impede trade and could therefore be banned.