Focusing on Tropical Timber from Latin America.
What will be the short term and long term effects of Ipe and Cumaru being listed on CITES in 2024?
The most likely occurrence will be a rush to cut and sell as much of both of these 2 species as possible for the next year or so before they are listed on CITES. The species are to be listed on CITES between June and November of 2024. However, it is possible that countries can place them on CITES before that. Prices will rise as the deadline gets closer and both will soon be too expensive to be used for decking and flooring. I would expect prices for both to rise at least 50% in the 2 or 3 years after they are officially on CITES and for sales to drop by at least 80 to 90% for both as a result. There will be a number of alternative species offered to replace them. I expect massaranduba, tigerwood, jatoba and garapa to be the main replacements from South America with iroko from Africa and merbau from Asia also used as replacements. When genuine mahogany was placed on CITES ll in 2003, African mahogany replaced a lot of that demand in the market place. However it only took 20 years for the Khaya species to also make the CITES list. I would expect at least 2 of the replacement species to be added to CITES within 10 years as well. This represents a failure of policy and planning. We not only cut species beyond their capacity to regenerate, we repeat the same mistakes with other species. The only possible and practical solution will be to have government funded and organized multi-species plantations on degraded pasturelands of the most popular commercial species. Without this type of policy we will encourage a black market for the endangered species and we will continue to add new ones to the list. The timber industry has refused to take the actions required to save their own future products. They are too focused on the next quarter to think about the next generation. For all the talk about sustainability in the timber industry, it remains all talk. Most would rather spend a dollar marketing their (fake) sustainability than spend a penny on planting the trees they will need to harvest in 50 years.
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