| 1961 |
WWF founded in September, registered as a charity under Swiss law.
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| 1975 |
WWF embarked on its first Tropical Rainforest Campaign, raising money and arranging for several dozen representative tropical rainforest areas in Central and West Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, to be managed as national parks or reserves. The organization is one of the pioneers in putting forest conservation on political agendas.
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| 1976 |
FAO released the Tropical Forest Report, an assessment of the world's tropical forests. This publication, along with others, led to wider acceptance by governments and international institutions of the need for international action to conserve forests.
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| 1980 |
WWF published a World Conservation Strategy in collaboration with IUCN - the World Conservation Union and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Endorsed by the United Nations Secretary General, the Strategy is launched simultaneously in 34 world capitals.
The strategy recommended a holistic approach to conservation and highlighted the importance of using natural resources sustainably. Since the launch, 50 countries went on to formulate and initiate their own national conservation strategies, based on its recommendations.
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| mid-1980s |
The alarming rate of tropical forest destruction and the ensuing media coverage of clear-cutting in Canada and the Amazon, among others, led environmental NGOs in Europe to call for boycotts of tropical timber by individual consumers and in public construction. This began with Friends of the Earth in the UK in 1984.
As illegal logging continued unabated, attention shifted to market-based solutions, such as FSC, to encourage good forest management.
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| 1986 |
The International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) was established under the auspices of the UN, to facilitate discussion, consultation and international cooperation on international trade and utilization of tropical timber, and the sustainable management of its resource base.
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| 1987 |
A controversial Tropical Forests Action Plan was launched by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), UN Environment and Development Programme (UNEP) and the Washington-based NGO World Resources Institute (WRI), following international concern over the rate of deforestation in the tropics.
Among others, the Plan aimed to promote improved management and use of forests, and setting up national forestry action plans.
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| 1988 |
In September, large fires caused by subsidies for land use swept through forest and ranch land in the Amazon, generating a smoke cloud that covered the whole of South America and which was observed from space. Eighty thousand square kilometres of the Amazon were cleared as a result.
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| 1989 |
SmartWood, the world’s first independent forestry certifier, introduced the concept of forest and forest-products certification. SmartWood has since been accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which it helped establish in 1993.
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| 1990 |
The Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) hosted the First Amazon Summit Meeting Between Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalists, in Iquitos, Peru.
The meeting provided an opportunity for indigenous peoples and environmentalists to understand each other's concerns, and also to establish a joint strategy for conserving the Amazonian rain forest. It culminated in the Declaration of Iquitos, which among other things, called for the recognition of territories for indigenous people to develop management and conservation programmes.
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| 1990s |
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| 1991 |
WWF, IUCN, and UNEP joined forces again to publish Caring for the Earth - A Strategy for Sustainable Living.
Launched in over 60 countries around the world, Caring for the Earth listed 132 actions people at all social and political levels could take to safeguard or improve their environment, while simultaneously increasing the quality of their life.
Forest certification was identified as a tool to achieve the conservation and sustainable development of forests in this second edition of the World Conservation Strategy. At the same time, the Strategy questioned the effectiveness of tropical timber boycotts which had been promoted by a number of NGOs in the 1980s.
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| 1992 |
UNCED – Rio, also known as the Earth Summit, brought together 172 governments to find solutions to pollution and the destruction of natural resources.
The event led to the adoption of Agenda 21, a blueprint to achieve sustainable development worldwide, and gave birth to the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC – precursor of the Kyoto Protocol), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) later in 1995.
UNCED was an important event in the international debate on forests. The Summit adopted a statement of "Forest Principles" and devoted a chapter of Agenda 21 to measures to combat deforestation.
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| 1993 |
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) was established by WWF and other organizations, to provide standard setting, trademark assurance and accreditation services for companies and organisations interested in responsible forestry.
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| 1995 |
WWF set a target of "10% of forests in protected areas by 2000". The target was achieved well before 2000.
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| 1997 |
The World Bank/WWF Alliance for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use was formed as a strategic partnership in response to the continued depletion of the world's forest loss and the consequent impacts.
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| 1997/98 |
Forest clearance for commercial plantations led to raging forest fires in Indonesia, costing an estimate economic loss of over US$ 4.4 billion. The resulting smog spreads to neighbouring countries, notably Malaysia and Singapore. Nearly two million hectares of forest land burnt down.
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| 1998 |
President Cardoso of Brazil pledged to place 41 million hectares - or 10% - of the Amazon in strict-use protected areas. This was the minimum needed, according to scientists, to secure a future for the region’s biodiversity.
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| 1999 |
The Yaoundé Summit, involving Cameroon, Gabon, the Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville and Equatorial Guinea, put forest conservation and management on the agenda as one of the most important issues in the sub-region. The event marked a turning point in the political commitment to forest conservation in the region.
Countries involved committed to increase protected areas and to cooperate on transborder conservation.
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| 2000 |
The world's total forest protected areas reached 480 million hectares, or roughly 12 per cent of all the planet's forests. That's equal to roughly half the total territory of the United States of America.
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| 2002 |
The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) was held as follow up to the UNCED process started in 1992.
The Amazon Region Protected Areas Program (ARPA), an initiative aimed at tripling the amount of the Amazon rainforest under federal protection, was launched at the WSSD by WWF, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the World Bank and the Brazilian government. It led to the creation of Brazil's Tumucumaque National Park, the world's largest tropical forest park (38,867 km²).
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| 2003 |
Madagascar's President committed to triple the island's protected area coverage, adding a further 5 million hectares, and placing more than two-thirds of the country's remaining forest under formal protection.
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| 2004 |
Governments attending a meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted a programme of work on protected areas, with clear targets and deadlines. This will help to achieve the goal of establishing a representative system of forest protected areas by 2010.
Another 42 million hectares of forests were brought under formal protection.
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| 2005 |
The Brazzaville summit - a follow-up to the Yaoundé Summit in 1999 - sees renewed and expanded commitment for Congo forests.
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| 2006 |
Total number of FSC-certified hectares reached over 68 million hectares, with over 10,000 FSC certified products available worldwide.
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