GREENPEACE OBTAINS COMMITMENT FROM JAPANESE LOGGING COMPANY WHILE G-8 FOREIGN MINISTERS CONTINUE TO POSTPONE CLEAR ACTION AGAINST ILLEGAL LOGGING AND TRADE

13 July 2000 Osaka/Miyazaki

Greenpeace activists displaying banners that read “Amazon Crime” and “Eidai stop buying illegal timber” stood outside the headquarters of the Japanese logging giant, Eidai, while other Greenpeace representatives met with company officials inside. Three days of confrontation resulted in a public commitment by Mr. Okamura, Administrative Director of Eidai, that the timber company would “no longer buy illegal logging.” All of this whilst the G-8 Foreign Ministers Meeting ended today without any clear action by the G-8 governments to combat illegal logging and trade. According to Greenpeace, the G-8 continues to ignore the destruction of the world’s last remaining ancient forests.

“The results of this meeting are extremely disappointing and do not adequately address the issue of illegal and destructive logging and illegal trade of timber and timber products,” said Martin Kaiser of Greenpeace. “Now it is up to the Heads of State to compensate for the incompetence of their foreign ministers and save the last ancient forests.”

During the past weeks, Greenpeace has highlighted the failure of the G- 8’s Forest Action Programme with actions in the UK, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Italy, Denmark and currently Japan, Portugal and Spain drawing attention to the ongoing imports of illegal timber from Africa, Russia and the Brazilian Amazon. Following the actions by Greenpeace to highlight illegal logging in Russia’s Far East, the Russian Regional Forests Prosecutors Office has suspended all logging activities in the Prymorsky region.

Greenpeace has proved that stopping illegal logging is a tangible possibility. Today’s statement by Eidai is the second positive action in the struggle to stop illegal logging and criminal timber trade in and by G- 8 nations. “Eidai has today admitted that they have done some things wrong in the past in terms of purchasing illegal timber,” said Flavio Montiel, Greenpeace Political Advisor from Brazil. “They are now committed to not purchasing illegal timber products. After being fined yesterday a record 1.88 million US dollars by the Government of Brazil, it is the least they could do.”

In Birmingham in 1998, the G-8 Heads of State agreed to fight against trade with illegally harvested timber and until today, have fallen far short from their initial goal. Now they have postponed their commitment. The responsibility of turning the current scene of ancient forest destruction around lies on the shoulders of the Heads of State meeting in Okinawa on July 21-23rd. The G-8 leaders must take strong steps to halt the destruction of ancient forests by adopting green procurement policies, offering new development aid to combat illegal logging and should abolish all perverse subsidies for ancient forest destruction.

In Indonesia, Cameroon and the Brazilian Amazon estimates for the amount of logs produced illegally have reached devastating numbers. Over half of all the timber coming from Cameroon, the largest tropical timber-producing country in Africa, is logged illegally. In Indonesia, millions of dollars in taxes and royalties are lost each year due to the smuggling, theft and looting of timber. In the Brazilian Amazon, government estimates show that 80% of timber is produced illegally.

This morning, Greenpeace boarded another vessel carrying timber from Cameroon to the port of Vilagarcia in Spain. Four Greenpeace activists climbed onto the crane of the Ranger 1 carrying timber belonging to a Lebanese logging company already found to be logging illegally by the Cameroonian Government.