51st Session of the International Tropical Timber Council
and Associated Sessions of the Committees (ITTC-51)

On Wednesday, ITTC-51 entered its third day of discussions. In the morning, Council held a vote to select a new Executive Director, but no clear winner emerged. Council then discussed: enhancing cooperation with CITES; the ITTO/CBD Collaborative Initiative to Conserve Tropical Forests; developments within the UNFCCC related to tropical forests; and progress in implementation of the ITTO Thematic Programmes.

At lunch, the ITTO and the EU held a side event on Independent Market Monitoring, a project undertaken to evaluate the impact of the EU’s efforts to exclude imports of illegal timber. This was followed by the Annual Market Discussion, including perspectives from the US, Malaysia, and Myanmar. In the evening, a Working Group met to discuss the admission of observers, as well as meetings of the Committee on Reforestation and Forest Management (CRF); the Committee on Finance and Administration (CFA); and the Committee on Economics, Statistics and Markets and the Committee on Forest Industry (CEM-CFI).