European Communities (Definition of Treaties) (2006 International Tropical Timber Agreement) Order 2008

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for his points. This is an important issue. Deforestation accounts for 17 per cent of world CO2, which is more than that from all the world’s transport emissions. It is crucial that we tackle it. Recent work has suggested that, by 2020, we could halve it with the right investment, and that, by 2030, we could probably go to a carbon-neutral forestry environment. Those are worthwhile objectives. The agreement sustains and redirects the ITTO. That is important because the ITTO has achieved a number of things during the past 20 years. It is about creating standards to describe what sustainability is about and an information system that makes the world markets much more transparent. We need those as essential building blocks in the sort of very big initiatives that will be needed by the world as a whole to tackle this problem—and it is a problem that we must solve. For instance, the UK Government are working with the European Commission on a diligence regulation that will require traders in timbers to adopt certain standards in certificating reports, and so on. That can happen only on the basis of the ITTO’s work in the past. The basis of the ITTO’s work in future will be to maintain those facilities and to move to much more directed and thematic operations. So it is right to approve the order. Although we should not underrate the value of the ITTO, bigger initiatives will be needed to tackle this large problem. Of the various carbon challenges, however, this is the most obviously solvable, provided that we get the right international momentum. On Question, Motion agreed to.