会议时间：2019年3月21-23日
会议地点：奥地利·格拉茨
演讲嘉宾：Paolo Omar Cerutti 
　　　　　Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Nairobi, Kenya

摘要：
Timber from Sub-Saharan Africa is often tainted with negative connotations: illegality, bad governance, unsustainability. Yet demand for tropical commercial timber keeps growing, also boosted by a growing demand within Africa. A small part of the production is sourced from managed forests, where a “sustainable management plan” is adopted and production is relatively well documented. But the largest part is sourced from forests where not even elementary management rules are implemented. Often, countries realize that forests have been highly degraded or empties of their most precious species only when it is too late to act. Powerful elites and large financial interests indeed play a role, but this also happens, as the recent cases of Senegal, Zambia, or the Democratic Republic of Congo show, because governments, various state officials, and practitioners still lack i) a clear understanding of the value of the forest, ii) sufficiently precise inventories of the species present in those forests, and iii) enough biological and silvicultural knowledge that would allow at least minimal management rules to be applied. International processes, such as the EU-led fight against illegal logging and timber trade, and conventions, such as CITES, can help in curbing part of the trade. But more can and must be done also on the consumer side of the equation. What timber was in that recent sofa you bought from IKEA? Where was the timber you bought on Alibaba coming from? Is your violin made with sustainably harvested ebony or rosewood? This keynote is ultimately about us, as consumers of tropical timber. Are we ready to say “No, thanks” if we don’t receive enough guarantees that what we are buying is indeed “known” and possibly “sustainable”?