Goho(=Legal) Wood NAVI

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you very much for your kind introduction.
As the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, I thank you all very much for gathering here today from many places throughout the world.

I am grateful that we have delegates from so many nations and regions including Canada, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the United States of America, and needless to say, many prefectures and cities of Japan. Thanks to you all, we are able to hold a conference of this scale.

Six years ago in the year 2001, I founded "The Illegal Logging Countermeasure Discussion Team" within the Liberal Democratic Party, the ruling party of Japan. Since then, I, as the chairperson of this Team, have tackled the issue of illegal logging with the cooperation of the government.

In the six years since, there have been many occasions where the issue was highlighted. At the G8 Summit in Evian, our then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made a major proposal for tackling this issue, which was subsequently incorporated into the Chairman's Statement by France's President Jacques Chirac and triggered a major movement worldwide. Two years ago, the G8 Summit in Glenn Eagles presented a framework to counter this problem on a larger scale.

I believe that the problem with illegal logging is threefold. The first aspect of the destruction of forests is its direct consequences, such as global warming and other environmental problems. When and where illegal logging continues, global warming and the earth's environmental problems worsen.

The second consequence of the destruction of forests is that the economic and sustainable resources of the affected areas are depleted and these areas become economically unsustainable.

The third consequence of illegal logging is its obstructive effect on fair and healthy forest management practices as a result of the distribution of illegally harvested wood in the world market. Thus, more areas where legal logging is practiced will see a destruction of forests in their turn, which will further worsen global warming and other environmental problems. These are the three major consequences of illegal logging. Therefore, I am keenly aware that illegal logging is a major problem of the 21st century, against which we must gather our forces in order to solve global warming and other environmental problems and to protect the future of humanity.

In line with this view, our government's Green Purchasing Law took effect in April 2006. Now, a system is laid out to ensure that the government will not select illegal materials, and will restrict its wood procurement to wood supplies of which the legality is verified. This seminar today is very significant in this context, and I hope that it will show us how the worldwide framework will work to counter this problem, and how we can improve the countermeasures already in place.

Three years ago, I visited the tropical forests of East Kalimantan on Borneo Island. Indonesian government officials and members of the parliament kindly led us on a tour to visit some logging sites. At that time, I was struck by the thought that it is crucial to develop a system to track wood supplies, and to control the trading and distribution of wood through such a tracking system.

This year, the Summit will be held in Germany. Next year, Japan will be the host. I hope that a wood tracking system will be developed and completed by the time the Summit is held in Japan, and that the world's wood distribution will be regulated by this system such that illegal wood will be eliminated from the market. My wish is that such a goal will be attained as soon as humanly possible. I hope that this seminar today will be very meaningful and fruitful, as well as informative, for all the delegates gathered here.

I should confess that the Secretariat had prepared my speech earlier, and I had intended to read it to make the job easier for the simultaneous interpreters. However, I decided to deliver my speech in my own words, because I am personally very passionate about this issue of illegal logging, being the first person in this nation to have tackled it and led the countermeasures against it.

On closing, I thank you once again for attending this seminar today, and hope that this seminar will be a major milestone in our effort for a better future together.

Thank you very much.