Post by Guy on Nov 6, 2010 4:53:19 GMT -5
This is the discussion thread. Please go here to cast your vote.
Wise Woodland Management
A resolution to increase the quality of the world's environment, at the expense of industry.
A resolution to increase the quality of the world's environment, at the expense of industry.
Category: Environmental
Industry Affected: Woodchipping
Proposed by: Bears Armed Mission
Description: The World Assembly,
Aware that the harvesting of timber is important to many nations’ economies, and that regrettably it may even sometimes be necessary to clear areas of woodland altogether to make way for people’s other activities,
Bothered that if such work is not managed wisely then it may cause serious damage to the environments not only of the nations responsible but of other nations too, and through this may harm those nations’ economies as well,
Concerned to limit such harmful cross-border effects, in order to reduce potential causes for international conflict as well as for the general welfare, and also to encourage member nations to manage their woodlands wisely in any case;
1. Therefore urges all WA member nations to _
A. Ensure that any woodland-based industries that exist within their jurisdiction, and any such activities that anybody based therein might conduct elsewhere, operate so as to cause as little environmental damage as possible in both the short term and the long term;
B. Make public any information that they possess about what constitutes good or bad practice in such matters;
2. Requires that all WA member nations refrain from woodland management and/or clearance projects in any cases where this would identifiably have a harmful effect on any specific other nation’s environment and/or ecosystems, and halt any such projects that are already having such effects, unless and until the government of the other nation concerned gives its informed and uncoerced consent to those operations;
3. Establishes a new department within WASP, called the Forestry Advisory Bureau (or ‘FAB’), whose main duties shall be _
A. To collate the available information about _ woodland ecosystems, how these can affect their wider environments, how natural forces can affect them, methods of woodland management, and the potential environmental effects of those varying methods and of woodland’s removal;
B. To conduct or sponsor studies to fill any gaps that exist within that existing knowledge;
C. To distribute this information to any nations that request it, as all WA members are urged to do should this seem potentially useful, and also to provide any nation that requests such help with the best possible advice about how to improve its woodland management policies;
D. To provide suitable experts to inspect any specific woodland-harvesting or woodland clearance projects for which this is requested, to assess and report on the likely effects of those activities, in exchange for reasonable fees (paid in advance);
E. To develop and publicise a set of symbols (to be called ‘FAB-marks’) that can be used to indicate that the timber or other woodland products to which they are attached came from operations that the FAB has inspected and certified as being sustainable in the long term, in the hope that this guarantee will encourage people to choose those materials over ones that were produced less sustainably;
4. Enacts that each WA member nation must prevent fraudulent use of FAB-marks and any other false claims to FAB approval within its jurisdiction, and also do what it can to prevent such deceits by anybody based therein who is operating abroad;
5. Stipulates that nations’ policies directly appertaining to woodland management and clearance are otherwise, except as specified by any earlier WA resolution that is still in effect, a matter for national rather than international regulation.
