La Suisse quitte l'Organisation internationale du bois

(BERN/YOKOHAMA). The Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) has initiated consultations for Switzerland to leave the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), a UN body that should ensure the sustainability of tropical timber production and trade. A formal decision by the Swiss government to quit ITTO is expected by the end of this year. 

The Bruno Manser Fonds (BMF) has learned from Swiss government sources that Switzerland remains committed to the goal of sustainable tropical forestry but no longer views ITTO as the appropriate channel to pursue this goal. 

This step comes less than a year after a Swiss-funded ITTO flagship project in Malaysian Borneo, the Upper Baram Forest Area (UBFA), was unilaterally terminated by the Sarawak government. ITTO drew heavy criticism from civil society for its handling of the project and for its lack of impartiality. 

The Sarawak project failed to properly implement Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) with Indigenous communities and was disrupted when the Sarawak Forest Department secretly granted a major new logging concession over the project area to a company controlled by a politically linked Malaysian timber tycoon.

The Bruno Manser Fonds welcomes the decision by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs but regrets that ITTO has lost its compass.

"ITTO is no longer a credible institution when it comes to forest conservation and sustainable tropical forestry", says BMF director Lukas Straumann. "It has consistently failed to address corruption as a key driver to tropical deforestation and has been captured by the timber lobby."

In the past, Switzerland had helped to finance important protected areas in Sarawak via ITTO channels, such as the Lanjak-Entimau and the Pulong Tau National Parks.

After ITTO was shattered by a multi-million-dollar fraud in 2016, Switzerland played a key role in investigating the facts. Switzerland had been an ITTO member since 1986.