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Workshop on Emerging Trade Measures in Timber Markets

Geneva
Over the last decades, timber has emerged as a globally traded commodity, with trade flows, especially of processed timber goods, growing rapidly. In this context, some stakeholders believe that despite attempts to minimize obstacles to the free flow of timber products, emerging measures, notably non-tariff ones, are increasingly affecting trade in these products. However, others feel that challenges facing the sector, such as forest degradation and loss, bio-diversity impoverishment, promotion of sustainable management of forests and climate change warrant new thinking.
The UNECE/FAO Timber section in cooperation with the World Trade Organization (WTO), and with the financial support of the Permanent Representation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Geneva, is organizing a workshop to discuss tariff and non-tariff measures affecting timber market.
Led by expert presentations, workshop participants will discuss the economic impacts of trade and trade-related measures on timber markets, taking into account the link between trade liberalization and the key challenges facing the forest-based sector. The workshop will give a unique opportunity to get a comprehensive overview of the regulatory framework around trade in timber products.
Topics addressed will include in particular: 
  • Tariffs, including the status of on-going WTO negotiations
  • Export restrictions
  • Subsidies
  • Measures to address illegal logging and associated trade such as the EU FLEGT Action Plan “due diligence” proposal or the US Lacey Act amendment
  • Other non tariff measures including public procurement regulations
  • Phytosanitary measures

For more information, please visit http://timber.unece.org/index.php?id=270 or contact Cedric Pène at [email protected]
Ref: ECE/TIM/10/P03

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