Message from SIR JOHN BOYD ORR
Director-General of FAO, to the International Timber Conference
THIS international timber conference you are opening is a development of the very first importance. You are coming to grips with grave and pressing problems and you have an opportunity to point the way, through constructive international efforts, to surmount them. It is a matter of great satisfaction to me to know that your meeting is actually getting under way; my one regret is that it is physically impossible for me to be with you.
In this message, which I am asking Mr. Leloup to present to you, I want to express my full awareness of the extent and urgency of forestry and timber problems, especially in the areas of Europe and other continents devastated by war. After a trip through Europe last autumn I became convinced that the housing situation presents a social and economic problem perhaps as pressing as the world food situation has presented in recent months. There is reason to hope, at any rate, that the food situation will show definite signs of improvement.
It is fitting that this timber conference should be held in an area that suffered great war devastation. I greatly appreciate the very considerable efforts which our host, the Government of Czechoslovakia, in the midst of its programs of reconstruction, must have made to make possible this conference within its borders. Also I want to express appreciation for the co-operation of the Emergency Economic Committee for Europe on the secretariat and in making available through their Timber Sub-Committee most extensive background material.
This conference is the first of a series of actions that will be worldwide. Plans are being made for conferences later in Latin America for the Western Hemisphere, and in the Far East. These, in turn, we hope will be followed by a world conference on timber and forestry, for there is no single region which can hope to solve its problems separately. The only lasting solution must come through worldwide co-operation.
In considering the needs of Europe and what should be done about them, you are undertaking an immense task. By the same token, I am confident that your accomplishments also will be large-scale. First, I expect that you will work out solid estimates of the quantities of lumber needed by the various countries for reconstruction and essential new building. Second, I expect that you will make an equally firm estimate of the maximum supplies of wood you can expect within the next year or so from the forests of your own countries without overcutting. Then, having brought the prospective needs and supplies together, you will know what proportion of your requirements will have to be met by lumber from other parts of the world. Third, I expect that you will make at least a beginning toward a program of long-range international action looking toward sound forestry practices, adequate supplies for all needs in various parts of the world, and fair incomes for forest workers.
Several times in the past I have made a statement in regard to food which I believe applies equally to products of the forest: If the nations cannot work together to solve the problems of supplying the people of the world with the basic necessities of life, there is little hope that they can work together on anything. I know that the nations can work together, and I believe they will, and that progress along that road will be made at your meeting in Czechoslovakia.
