The world of forestry: What is the ECE Agriculture and Timber Committee?

What is the ECE Timber Committee?
For forestry, it looks at the common economic and technical interests of 34 governments which might otherwise tend to go separate ways in Eastern and Western Europe, the Soviet Union and North America

Publications
New paper fibre recovery system
Two pesticides to be banned in the United States
National Parks Planning

Thirty-four countries in Europe and North America cooperate on forestry and forest products matters in the ECE Timber Committee, a principal subsidiary body of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), based in Geneva. Countries which are members of the United Nations but not of ECE may - and often do participate in activities of the Committee which are of particular concern to them.

Many aspects of the ECE Timber Committee's work are of interest not only to the officials directly concerned, but also to other experts in the forest products sector.

Representatives of trade and industry, research institutes and universities take part in the activities organized by the Committee as advisers to national delegations.

International organizations, both governmental and non-governmental, contribute to the Committee's work in a consultative capacity.

The Committee was founded in 1947 in order to allocate after the war the limited available supplies of sawn softwood and pitprops needed for the reconstruction of Europe. With the establishment of a peace-time economy and the rapid growth in demand for forest products, its activities have broadened in response to changing needs to include other products, notably hardwoods, wood-based panels and pulpwood, technical questions of timber harvesting, processing and utilization and analysis of long-term trends.

The ECE Timber Committee now has eight main fields of work:

· Analysis of forest products markets.
· Standardization of forest products.
· Long-term trend and prospects for forestry and the forest products sector.
· Economic and technological problems in the wood-working industries.
· Utilization of forest products.
· Improvement of forest working techniques and training of forest workers.
· Environmental problems and conservation of resources in the forestry and forest products sector.
· Statistics of forestry and forest products.

Seminars and symposia

Attendance at seminars and symposia organized by the Committee is open to experts in the subjects to be discussed, with the permission of their governments.

Meetings in the Committee's programme (1979-80) include:

1979

Utilization of tropical hardwoods, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 15-18 May Forest resource assessment, Geneva, Switzerland, 21-23 May
Effects of air-borne pollution on vegetation, Warsaw, Poland, 20-24 August Mechanization and techniques of thinning operations, Nancy, France, 17-22 September
Problems and policies relating to the forestry and forest industry sector in southern European countries, Lisbon, Portugal, 17-21 September
Economic and technical developments in the furniture industry, Poznan, Poland, 5-10 November

1980

Vocational training for small forest owners and farmers, Norway, March
Afforestation and reforestation machines and techniques, Madrid, Spain, April
Modernization in the wood-based panels industries, Helsinki, Finland, May Forest fire prevention and control, Poland, June
Applied ergonomics and safety and health in highly mechanized logging operations, Canada, August
Technical and economic aspects of the production and use of finger-jointed sawnwood for structural purposes, Norway, autumn.
The programmes of seminars and symposia are usually announced in the trade press some six months before they take place.

Study tours

A study tour is organized each year by a member government, usually between May and October, to present aspects of forestry and the wood processing industries in its country to ECE Committee members. Interested exporters, with the approval of their governments, take part in such tours. The 1979 tour took place in the USSR, 2-14 September.

Information on seminars, symposia, study tours, publications or other features of the Committee's activities can be obtained from:

The Chief, Timber Section,
Joint ECE/FAO
Agriculture and Timber Division.
Palais des Nations, CH-1211
Geneva 10, Switzerland.

Publications

The FAO/ECE Timber Bulletin for Europe and its supplements give wide diffusion to the results of the ECE Timber Committee's work. Regular supplements include:

· An annual review of forest products markets in the previous year (published July/August).
· The Timber Committee's analysis of trends in the current year and prospects for the coming year (published November/December).
· Medium-term surveys, in greater detail than the annual reviews, of markets for particular forest products (in a three-year rotation: 1977 - wood-based panels, 1978 - sawnwood and sawlogs, 1979 -pulpwood, pitprops and miscellaneous roundwood, etc.). The structure and capacity of the wood based panels and sawmilling industries are also analysed in the appropriate surveys.
· Papers presented to seminars and symposia held under the Committee's auspices.

A study of particular interest is European timber trends and prospects, 1950 to 2000 (supplement 3 to volume XXIX of the Timber Bulletin for Europe). The price of this study is US$17.00 or the equivalent in other currencies.

SECRETARIAT

The ECE Timber Committee shares a Secretariat with the European Forestry Commission of FAO. Both bodies contribute staff members to the joint division. This arrangement ensures close coordination between the two. The FAO body is concerned primarily with problems relating to the forest and forestry and the ECE body with wood, from felling to final utilization. The existence of joint subsidiary bodies, in the fields of forest working techniques and of statistics, furthers this coordination. The Joint ECE/FAO Agriculture and Timber Division will provide on request information about the work of both the ECE Committee and the FAO Commission and their subsidiaries.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

The Timber Bulletin for Europe

Two numbers of the Bulletin appear each year, one with statistics for the period January-June and one for January-December. The Bulletin provides quarterly data of the production, trade (export and import, for most products by origin and destination) and prices in the ECE region of the major forest products. The January-December Bulletin is somewhat more detailed, especially as regards trade flows.

Supplements to the Bulletin issued since 1970 are listed below (date of publication in brackets). Recurrent publications, such as the market reviews, have been omitted except for the most recent issue.

Vol. XXV:

(3) Papers presented to the Symposium on coordination between forestry and the wood-using industries (2 volumes) (April 1973).
(5) Utilization sector study: railway sleepers (July 1973).
(6) Classification and definitions of forest products (advance version) (August 1973).

Vol. XXVI:

Lectures delivered to the thirty-first session of the Committee (December 1973). The lectures covered (a) stress grading of sawn softwood, (b) structural and geographical advances in the industrial use of timber in the USSR and (c) the outlook for timber in the United States.
(4) Medium-term survey of the wood-based panels sector (June 1974).

Vol. XXVII:

(3) Medium-term survey of the trends in the sawnwood and sawlog sector (December 1974).

Vol. XXVIII:

(2) Papers presented to the Symposium on the modernization of the sawmilling industry (2 volumes) (November 1975).
(4) Papers presented to the Symposium on "Forests and wood: their role in the environment" (3 volumes) (February 1976).

Vol. XXIX:

(3) European timber trends and prospects, 1950 to 2000 (1976).
(4) Forest products statistics. Part I - production and trade, 1964-74 (March 1977).
(5) Forest products statistics. Part II - apparent consumption, 1964-75 (1977).
(6) Papers presented to the Symposium on extending the use of wood residues (2 volumes) (June 1977).
(7) The causes of cyclical fluctuations in the markets for forest products and ways to reduce them (January 1977).

SUPPLEMENTS TO THE FAO/ECE Timber Bulletin for Europe

Title

VOL. XXX

(1) Annual Forest Products Market Review (referring to 1976 and the early months of 1977) (July 1977).
(2) ECE recommended standard for stress grading of coniferous sawn timber (December 1977).
(3) ECE recommended standard for finger-jointing in structural coniferous sawn timber (December 1977).
(4) Forest Products Market Trends in 1977 and Prospects for 1978 (based on the review of markets at the Timber Committee's thirty-fifth session, 17-21 October 1977) (December 1977).
(5) Investment in the forestry and wood-processing sector (lectures delivered to the thirty-fifth session of the Timber Committee) (February 1978).
(6) Forest Products Statistics: Price Series, 1950-1976 (January 1978).
(7) Long-term price trends for forest products in selected European countries (April 1978).
(8) Medium-term survey of the wood-based panels sector (including a survey of production capacity and raw material consumption) (February 1978).
(9) Forest and forest products - Country profiles: No. 1, Greece (April 1978).
(10) Study on the trade and utilization of tropical hardwoods (July 1978).

All supplements to the Bulletin are available in English, French or Russian, except the proceedings of seminars or symposia, which are issued in trilingual versions. The Bulletin itself is published in a bilingual English/French version.

HOW TO OBTAIN THE Timber Bulletin for Europe AND ITS SUPPLEMENTS

The Bulletin and its supplements may be obtained from bookstores and distributors throughout the world. Consult your bookstore or write to United Nations, Sales Section, New York or Geneva.

A list of distributors may be obtained from the Sales Section. You may also place a standing order for the Bulletin and its supplements with your distributor.

New paper fibre recovery system

A new method for recovering raw material from mercury-containing fibre sediment in water courses at old pulp mills has been developed by the Swedish Water and Air Pollution Research Laboratory (IVL). The method, developed on behalf of Westerviks Pappersbruk/PLM, is based on a fractionating process, where finely dispersed substances such as clay and mud are separated and the fibre content of the large amounts of sludge can be recycled. In all, about 10 million tons of fibre, containing about 150 tons of mercury, have been discharged into water courses from the paper and pulp mills in Sweden, the Swedish Pulp and Paper Association says in a report on the method. IVL, in a recently completed study, estimates that several hundred thousand tons of this fibre that are now lying at the bottom of water courses could be utilized for paper pulp production.

Two pesticides to be banned in the United States

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that by I July 1983 the use of the pesticides chlordane and heptachlor will be virtually banned. They will be allowed only for underground control of termites. The EPA said that the pesticides caused cancer in laboratory animals.

National Parks Planning

Forestry Paper No. 6, 1978
FAO Technical Papers. FAO, Rome. Italy. 41 p.

The Forestry Department of FAO has been and continues to be involved in assisting member countries with the planning and management of their national parks. The original Spanish version of this manual was prepared for a project in Latin America. There was, however, an urgent need for a similar publication in other parts of the developing world. An English version was therefore produced which became available in March of 1978. The manual incorporates a synthesis of experience gained by FAO in this field and is illustrated with annotated examples drawn from the plans of individual national parks of many parts of the world.

Its three basic sections are headed (1) The Resource, (2) Background Information, and (3) Management and Development. The manual is not a textbook, but a guide on what data are needed and how they should be presented in planning national parks and related areas, cultural monuments or biological reserves.

The FAO Technical Papers are available through authorized FAO Sales Agents or directly from Distribution and Sales Section, FAO, 00100 Rome, Italy.

unasylva writers keep you in contact with the realities of forestry all over the world

and they are especially good at combining theory and practice because they write from experience as well as knowledge
· V.S. Balinga, author of "Competitive uses of wildlife", UNASYLVA Vol. 29, No. 116, is with the Direction des eaux et forêts et chasses, Republic of Cameroon.

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