The Tropical Timber Trade Regime

by F. Gale

Overview

Gale explains why international negotiations have not produced a sustainable solution to tropical rainforest degradation. Using an innovative, critical approach to international regimes, the author analyzes the structure and operation of the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO). He shows how the timber industry and producing- and consuming-country governments created a blocking alliance that favoured developmentalist interests and ideas. The ITTO bolstered this alliance by permitting environmentalists merely to voice, but not to negotiate, their concerns.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312213176
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	09/14/1998
Series:	International Political Economy Series
Edition description:	1998
Pages:	287
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

FRED P. GALE is an Associate Lecturer, School of Government, University of Tasmania. He was previously Research Associate with the Eco-Research Chair of Environmental Law and Policy at the University of Victoria. Prior to his doctoral studies, Dr Gale worked for over ten years in the field of international development, as a volunteer English teacher in Sabah College, Sabah, Malaysia, as a program officer with the Irish Agency for Personal Service Overseas, and as a desk officer with the United Nations World Food Program in Rome, Italy. He has written several monographs on the BC forest products industry, eco-certification and labelling, and international trade policy.

Table of Contents

List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• List of Acronyms
• The Tropical Rainforest Crisis
• International Regimes: A Conceptual History
• A Neo-Gramscian Approach to International Regimes
• Tropical Deforestation and Rainforest Degradation
• The Tropical Timber Trade
• The International Tropical Timber Agreement, 1983
• State Coalitions Contesting the Tropical Timber Trade Regime
• Industry and Civil Society Organizations Contesting the TTTR
• The Politics of Regime Creation: Normative Consent
• Eco-Certification and Labeling as Compliance Mechanisms
• The ITTO Mission to Sarawak
• Explaining Tropical Deforestation and Rainforest Degradation
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index

Editorial Reviews

Gale (political science, U. of Victoria, British Columbia) examines the structures and operation of the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), created to balance tropical timber demand with supply. He argues that the tropical timber industry plays a key role in structuring social relations in developing countries, thereby providing both the ideological justification for overcutting and the wherewithal to carry it out. He also details how the interests of corporations and governments coalesced to form a coalition against environmentalists, preventing the adoption of genuine sustainable forest management policies. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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