11 November 2013: The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Legally Binding Agreement on Forests in Europe (INC-Forests) was unable to finalize the text of a convention on forests during its final session. The fourth session of INC-Forests, which had originally convened for a week in Warsaw, Poland, in June 2013, had been suspended in the hopes of producing a breakthrough by resuming for two days, from 7-8 November 2013, in Geneva, Switzerland.

The draft convention entered the Geneva meeting with bracketed text in the title and articles concerning the conference of the parties, right to vote, secretariat, compliance, convention amendments, depositary, signature, ratification, entry into force and termination. These portions of the draft convention text were all discussed in plenary on the morning of 7 November, with no substantive breakthroughs forthcoming.

The Committee also reviewed the heavily bracketed draft of a decision presenting the draft convention to the Extraordinary Ministerial Conference of FOREST EUROPE, to be held in Madrid, Spain at a date to be determined in early 2014, to review the results of INC-Forests negotiations, but that review produced no breakthrough either.

Most of the meeting focused on resolving disagreement over institutional arrangements for servicing and administering the convention. Noting that a compromise package rejected in Warsaw had centered on FAO as the lead in a joint secretariat with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), Switzerland proposed the approach of negotiating a package centered on UNECE as lead and asking countries favoring the UNECE to indicate what other outstanding issues they would be willing to compromise on if they got their choice of secretariat lead.

The European Union (EU) rejected the Swiss proposal, suggesting instead to consider a joint secretariat with all participating entities “on equal footing” and sending the draft convention to a diplomatic conference for adoption. Switzerland, Ukraine and the Russian Federation would not agree to a diplomatic conference without prior full and clear understanding of its parameters and knowing whether the institutional question would be agreed on before the diplomatic conference.

Unable to break the impasse, the Committee decided to forward to the Extraordinary FOREST EUROPE Ministerial Conference the report of the Warsaw and Geneva meetings of INC-Forests4, along with annexes containing, among other things, the draft convention, brackets and all, and the draft “compilation of proposals regarding draft elements” for a Ministerial decision, for consideration and appropriate action. [IISD RS Coverage of Resumed INC-Forests4] [Resumed INC-Forests 4 webpage]