Forestry activities in Europe
European Timber Subcommittee
First session of the European forestry and Forest Products Commission
Report from the Director-General to the Second Session of the Council of FAO
IT GIVES me great pleasure to report that the work on European timber and forestry problems carried out at Geneva by FAO begins to yield tangible results. The European timber situation shows definite signs of improvement, and two agreements concluded recently by the European Timber Committee justify hopes for further increases in timber production and exports during 1948, a stabilization of timber prices, and a satisfactory distribution of available supplies. These were, as Council members recall, the principal objectives sought by the recommendations of the International Timber Conference organized in May 1947 at Marianske Lazne by the Czechoslovak Government and FAO.
In accordance with the conclusions of that conference and subsequent instructions by FAO's annual Conference, an FAO task force was established last September at the Palais des Nations in Geneva to organize and service a European Timber Committee, established within the framework of the Economic Commission for Europe, and to act as European outpost of FAO's Division of Forestry and Forest Products. For the first six months this small staff unit was headed by Dr. Egon Glesinger, Chief of the Forest Products Branch, who has now returned to Washington and is succeeded in Geneva by Mr. Roy D. Cameron, former Dominion Forester of Canada, who recently joined the staff of the Division of Forestry and Forest Products as chief of its European branch.
INCREASED TIMBER SUPPLIES IN 1947
The Timber Committee has held two sessions. The first session, which was presided over by Mr. Gunnar Lange of Sweden and at which Mr. Marcel Leloup, Director of the Division of Forestry and Forest Products, represented the Director General, was able to register the fact that all major wood-producing countries of Europe (with the exception of the U.S.S.R.) were already carrying out the Marianske Lazne recommendation to increase the output and exports of timber by 10 percent. As a result, the timber-importing nations of Europe and the Mediterranean area were able to receive 2.7 million standards of softwood during 1947, which constitutes an increase of roughly one million standards over 1946.
TIMBER AGREEMENTS FOR 1948 AND 1949
The second session of the Timber Committee was held from 26 to 31 January and elected Mr. Bernard Dufay (France), who is also Vice-Chairman of FAO's Standing Advisory Committee for Forestry and Forest Products, as permanent Chairman for 1948 and Mr. B. Ropelewski (Poland) as Vice-Chairman. The opening meeting was addressed by Mr. F. L. McDougall, Counselor of FAO, on behalf of the Director General. In the course of that session, two formal agreements were concluded.
(1) Agreement for Increased Timber Production
Europe's major timber-exporting countries have undertaken to increase softwood exports by 550,000 standards in 1948 and 720,000 standards in 1949, provided they can secure, by 1 July 1948, assurances of receiving woodworking equipment, additional supplies of coal and coke, and supplementary food allocations for forest workers as well as fodder for horses engaged in logging operations. This agreement is the result of six months negotiations and screening organized by the secretariat of the Timber Committee.
The plan involves a credit request from Austria, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Poland, and Yugoslavia of 16 million dollars for the purchase of the earlier mentioned timber production facilities. If this is granted in time, these countries have agreed to export additional timber and pitprops worth 42.4 million dollars in 1948 and 68.8 million dollars in 1949. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development has followed closely these negotiations, sent an observer to the meetings of the Timber Subcommittee, and has now taken the matter under active consideration.
Sweden has not requested a credit but has under-taken to increase exports in 1948 by 100,000 standards of softwood and 300,000 m3 of pitprops against an additional allocation of one million tons of coke. Immediately after the Timber Subcommittee's session, this request was taken up by ECE's Coal Committee and arrangements have been made to provide Sweden with practically all the additional coke her representatives at the Coal Committee considered necessary. In this way, Sweden's undertaking for additional exports in 1948 is about to take effect.
(2) Agreement on Buying Limits for 1948
This second agreement was reached by all European importing countries with the concurrence of the representatives of all exporting countries present at the meeting. It limits import purchases for 1948 to specific figures set out in the report for each country and amounting to a total of 2.7 million standards, i.e.. approximately the present effective demand (see below). These figures are binding until 1 July 1948 but are regarded only as a first installment. It is expected that a second installment will be released for 1948 as soon as more is known about purchasing facilities resulting from ERP (European Recovery Plan).
CURRENCY DIFFICULTIES AND EFFECTIVE DEMAND
In appraising these two agreements, a further feet should be taken into consideration. The Timber Committee already found in October that currency difficulties were preventing many nations from buying timber they needed. In January, the Committee concluded that these monetary difficulties have reduced Europe's effective import demand for timber to 2.6 million standards compared to estimated essential needs for the same year of 4.3 million standards. Prospective export supplies are placed at 2.4 million standards and are thus even below the present effective demand.
Substantially larger imports than those listed as effective demand are indispensable to prevent lack of timber becoming a serious bottleneck in current reconstruction plans. Most delegates expect that purchasing facilities to be obtained in c connection with ERP are likely to raise effective timber import demand in 1948 to somewhere between 3.5 and 4 million standards. In that case the European timber shortage would again become very acute.
The two agreements listed above were considered necessary and urgent to take care of this development. Their combined effect should be to stabilize timber prices at their present level, possibly even to produce a slight reduction and at the same time to make sure that all European importing nations can get their share of available export supplies.
PITPROPS
Tile Timber Subcommittee has also concerned itself with the pitprops situation. While there appears to be a small deficit on paper, it is believed that export supplies of pitprops in 1948 would be sufficient to cover the requirements of European coal production even if plans for expansion of coal output were fully accomplished, which is not considered likely.
QUARTERLY TIMBER BULLETIN
FAO's Geneva Office for Forestry and Forest Products has also started to issue a quarterly commodity report on timber containing, in addition to factual information, regular statistics on production, stocks, trade, and prices. This bulletin is published jointly by FAO and ECE.
Other joint projects with ECE undertaken by the Geneva forestry office include a timber consumption study and extension of secretarial and statistical services to forest products of key importance not yet adequately covered by present activities, such as pitprops, railway ties, fiber boards, and plywood.
CO OPERATION WITH IRO
Recently FAO's European forestry staff was invited by Mr. Tuck, Executive Secretary of the International Refugee Organization, to undertake a joint project de signed to provide displaced persons with prefabricated houses before sending them to their new home countries (" Operation Snail ").
FAO PROJECTS
In addition to these joint projects with other international organizations, the Geneva staff is engaged in an increasing number of purely FAO activities. Foremost among these is the organization of FAO's Forestry and Forest Products Commission for Europe, which is to hold its first session during June in Geneva and to attempt a co-ordination of forestry legislation and management among all European countries in pursuance of recommendations made by the Marianske Lazne Conference and endorsed by FAO's annual Conference of 1947 (see Commission II report, paragraph No. 49). Mr. Dufay (France) has been designated as Chairman of the Commission. In this way, FAO's European Forestry and Forest Products Commission will function with the same chairman and the same secretariat as the European Timber Committee.
Co-operation with European governments and National FAO Committees, contacts with FAO's Rome office, organization of technical meetings, and assumption of secretariat functions for the International Poplar Commission and a number of other specialized European bodies. constitute some of the other activities now performed by the Geneva Forestry Office. The preparation of the World Forestry Congress to be held in Finland in the summer of 1949 will become another major assignment of the Geneva staff.
CONCLUSIONS
I believe that the activities which I have been able to report to the Council are encouraging. In the course of a personal visit which Mr. McDougall and I paid to Geneva in January, we were particularly impressed by the fact that this new type of co-operation, initiated with regional outposts of the United Nations and specialized agencies, provides FAO with the possibility of getting right down to practical operations. It might be worthwhile to examine, in the light of this first experience, the desirability of extending such regional co-operation with UN bodies to other fields of FAO's activities and even to other continents.
ISSUES FOR THE COUNCIL'S CONSIDERATION
The report on the activities of the Timber Committee to the forthcoming third plenary session of ECE is attached to this note for the consideration of the Council of FAO. In the light of this report and of the preceding comments, the Council may wish to deal with the following issues:
(1) Review of the agreement for increased timber production reached by the Timber Committee in general and of its implications with regard to special allocations of food and fodder.(2) Review of the results achieved by the European Timber Committee with a view to making suggestions regarding its future activities and status.
(3) Consideration of the work and program of the Forestry and Forest Products Branch at Geneva.
(4) Action with regard to establishment of FAO's Forestry and Forest Products Commission for Europe.
Statement by Prof. G. Myrdal, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe
The European Working Group of FAO's Division of Forestry and Forest Products has been entrusted with providing the secretariat for ECE's Timber Subcommittee. After organizing this secretariat and establishing working relations with ECE, Dr. Egon Glesinger has recently returned to Washington from Geneva. The work is now being carried on by Mr. D. Roy Cameron, Chief of the Division's European Working Group. On the occasion of this transfer of activities, the Executive Secretary of ECE, Mr. Gunnar Myrdal, released the press communique from which the following passages are quoted.
"The Timber Subcommittee has become an effective, new institution in European economic life. This newly developed arrangement for dealing with European timber problems through international co-operative action owes much of its success to the effective collaboration of the ECE and FAO. No small share of credit for this success is due to the Food and Agriculture Organization, whose efforts wedded to those of the Economic Commission for Europe, made it possible to reach international agreements on European timber production and trade at the Subcommittee's recent second session.
"It is the first time in the history of the United Nations, that a United Nations organ and a Specialized Agency have pooled their resources in so intimate a way and on such a large scale. Among the advantages accruing from this cooperative working arrangement are the achievement of a, unified international policy and a considerable saving in costs. Both of these advantages are appreciated by the Governments and the taxpayers."
The Subcommittee is to a certain extent an outgrowth of the FAO Timber Conference held at Marianske Lazne, Czechoslovakia, last April and May. A great deal of progress has been made since that time, when little was known about the real timber situation in Europe. At that time last spring, the ECE was getting under way in the field of timber, and Mr. Myrdal, Executive Secretary of ECE, and Sir John Boyd Orr, Director General of FAO, arranged for the cooperative efforts of these organizations on the timber problems. A working arrangement was established under which FAO provided the technical officers, and they in turn directed the substantive work on timber within the ECE. The ECE provided secretarial assistance, various facilities, and conference services.
The liaison between the ECE and FAO on timber problems is being organized on a continuing basis. For the purpose, FAO has established a European Forestry Office at the headquarters of the ECE.
The experiment in collaboration has worked so well that the same type of cooperation is expected to develop in other fields of joint interest between the ECE and specialized agencies.
Readers of Unasylva will be well aware that FAO's European Forestry and Forest Products Office has, in accordance with recommendations of the Marianske Lazne Timber Conference, collaborated closely with the Economic Commission for Europe, in organizing the FAO-ECE Timber Subcommittee in agreement with the general trend of action suggested by the Conference for finding a short-term solution to the European timber short-age.
This co-operation has already borne fruit, but timber and forestry problems go beyond the scope of ECE interests. Measures to alleviate the immediate European timber shortage are naturally its concern, but one must not lose sight of the fact that the shortage is basically due to insufficient production from the forests of the continent. The effects of this will be felt more and more, as the domestic timber requirements of other continents increase or as their diminished resources oblige them to curtail exports to Europe.
Problems of timber and forestry should not be regarded only from the short-term view. Rather, it is impossible to say precisely where the short term ends and the long term begins, since measures taken to settle urgent problems must inevitably have repercussions for the future, perhaps the far distant future.
This is why the Marianske Lazne Conference also recommended that European countries interested in forest matters "should meet together from time to time to exchange information and views about their problems in the field of medium and long-term forestry." This recommendation, endorsed by the annual Conference of FAO held at Geneva, brought into being the European Forestry and Forest Products Commission. Composed of experts fully qualified to speak for and represent their governments, this Commission will assemble in June to examine such problems.
There is an obvious need to prevent overlapping of the activities of the FAO-ECE, Timber Subcommittee and the Forestry and Forest Products Commission. This is assured by the fact that the chairmanship of both bodies has been vested in Mr. B. Dufay, Director General of Waters and Forests, France, while the secretariat for both is to be provided by FAO's European -Forestry and Forest Products Office at Geneva.
In making initial contacts at the first meeting of the Commission, delegates will find themselves confronted with a wide field for action. Without prejudging the issue, one may say that discussions will be directed on the one hand, towards means of increasing the productivity of European forests as quickly as possible; and on the other hand, towards securing, equally rapidly, the complete and rational utilization of the output promised by technical developments.
These two types of problems must bring a large number of others in their train. The Marianske Lazne Conference was content to draw attention to the more important and especially recommended study of periodic inventories, development of forestry and forest products research, problems of manpower. and improved working conditions both in the forest and factory, plans for the use of barren land, international control of insect pests and disease, and seed and plant certification for reforestation projects.
Such a wide variety of questions cannot of course be treated and solved at a single meeting of the European Commission. All European countries with forest traditions have their own programs and definite forest policies. The Commission offers these countries a good opportunity of comparing and discussing these programs and policies, with the aim of their co-ordination into a European program, so as to attain the maximum value from them. The discussions of the FAO-ECE Timber Subcommittee indicate this to be a task of some urgency. The co-operation of European countries at the first session of the Forestry and Forest Products Commission will mark the first step towards its accomplishment.
