|
With mahogany,
Bush goes a shade greener
The US vote to toughen rules for the wood's trade has some
questioning motive.
By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON – George W. Bush
isn't known around the world as a tree-hugger. After all, he's vilified
from Munich to Manila for withdrawing the United States from the Kyoto
accords on global warming, he's itching to open up the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, and he recently reversed the Clinton
administration by throwing open Yellowstone National Park to noisy, smelly
snowmobiles.
So it may come as a surprise that President Bush, who likes to chop up
mesquite and Texas cedar when he has a chance, has found a soft spot for
mahogany - a tropical rain-forest tree so commercially valuable that
Brazilians call it "green gold."
The United States surprised and delighted environmentalists - while
infuriating wood importers and furniture manufacturers - when it voted
last week in favor of new international rules toughening the conditions
for trade in mahogany cut in the wild.
Some environmental groups suspect the White House of merely looking for an
easy way to improve its not-so-green image. But others see it as a sign
the administration is taking seriously a call Bush made Valentine's Day
for the US to find ways to take on the global scourge of illegal logging.
With some woods so valuable they are rivaling drugs and diamonds as income
sources for international mafias, better control of the mahogany trade has
become a law-enforcement issue as well as an environmental one.
"This is not window dressing. We're serious about what we're trying to
do," says a White House source involved in environmental projects. "We
think it's good for the world to work together on these kinds of
international issues."
The regulations, approved on a tight vote last week at the biennial
meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES) in Santiago, Chile, mean that countries exporting mahogany will
have to ensure it is harvested legally and in a sustainable manner.
Amazon alarm
Illegal mahogany cutting is a major cause of deforestation in Brazil's
Amazon rain forest, as well as across swaths of Central America. With the
US purchasing 70 percent of Brazil's mahogany for everything from pricey
dining sets to coffins to high-end car trim, the CITES vote - and US
support for it - is considered key to bringing illegal logging under
control and slowing the Amazon's deterioration. "Our goal [has been] to
find a pathway that would be best for the conservation of the resource,"
says Craig Manson, the assistant secretary of the Interior who headed the
US delegation to the CITES meeting.
Yet as pleased as environmentalists are, they say the vote doesn't mean
the US under Bush has gone wobbly on its approach to the environment.
"This was a tremendous victory not just for mahogany but for rain forests
more generally, but I don't give the administration much of the credit for
it," says Carroll Muffett of Defenders of Wildlife in Washington. "The
fact that they came here [to the Santiago meeting] without a firm stand on
how they would vote, when in fact mahogany is the single biggest problem
in illegal logging, tells me they aren't that focused on the issue."
Interior's Mr. Manson says the "assumption" some critics have made - that
arriving in Santiago without a set position on mahogany showed a lack of
US commitment - "is not accurate." Rather, he says, the stance was a
negotiating tactic. When the US found no consensus among wild-mahogany
exporting countries, he says, it decided to vote in favor of the new
rules.
In any case, other experts say they are encouraged that the administration
is paying attention to global environmental issues - even if the
explanation for it is not purely green. "At the end of the day, the US saw
this was going to pass, so they went with it as an opportunity to show
leadership on illegal logging," says Scott Paul of Greenpeace.
'Conflict timber'
The US vote actually falls in line with other concerns that are higher on
the administration's agenda since 9/11, Mr. Paul says. "Illegal logging
has become a real law-and-order issue. There's so much money in this
illegal trade that people talk about 'conflict timber' [just as they do
about 'conflict diamonds']," he says.
Evidence has surfaced of illegal-logging money fueling conflict between
Liberia and Sierra Leone, and even going to Al Qaeda, Paul says.
But he joins administration officials in pointing out other initiatives
that predate the mahogany vote, backing up the claim that the
administration didn't just discover trees last week. Manson says that
recently the administration announced an ambitious Congo Basin initiative
to be undertaken with several African countries and nongovernmental
organizations for the preservation and sustainable use of millions of
tropical forest acres.
And earlier this year, the US demonstrated its sensitivity to the mahogany
issue by impounding millions of dollars' worth of mahogany in US ports
after Brazil put a freeze on its trade.
The action sent tropical-wood importers to court to sue the US government
for release of a product they had already purchased. But officials say
they're confident consumers want the peace of mind of knowing the
dining-room set they buy isn't contributing to the Amazon Basin's demise.
|
