David Cameron

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Timber dealers and furniture makers who possess illegally logged wood could face prosecution under Conservative plans to help protect rain-forests from destruction. David Cameron, the Tory leader, said yesterday that creating a market value, through the Kyoto agreement, for keeping rainforests rather than cutting them down was also part of the solution to climate change.

"We need clear standards so that we don't encourage the use of illegally logged timber," said Mr Cameron in a speech on biodiversity and the environment.
He said there needed to be a range of other measures against illegal deforestation.
The Conservative Party was looking at a number of ideas, including making the possession of illegally logged timber an offence, though officials stressed that any new laws would be aimed at dealers and the supply chain, rather than individuals who owned a piece of furniture manufactured from endangered timber
The party also wanted to push for a European Union- wide definition of sustainable timber, working for an EU ban on products that did not meet these criteria, phased to allow countries time to reach the required standard.
Mr Cameron, who visited the Cheltenham Science Festival, which is backed by The Daily Telegraph, added: "We have to base our policy on science and the evidence."
The Tory party recently published Forests for Life, which aims for a 75 per cent reduction in deforestation, year on year, and proposes putting a price on the carbon stored in rainforests.
Habitat conversion, pre-eminently deforestation, is a major driver of climate change.
He stressed that it was important not to get too carried away with one environmental technology, such as biofuels, without thinking through the wider implications.
"If we do not have any regulation of this we could see the destruction of a lot of rainforest in parts of the world to grow palm oil, for example," he said.
Another priority was to support a Marine Bill in the next Parliament, he said. "A Marine Bill would enable us to take a more effective and strategic approach to safeguarding a priceless - and irreplaceable - natural asset."
Mr Cameron gave a speech on biodiversity before discussing environmental issues with the festival's guest director, Jonathon Porritt, who is chairman of the UK's Sustainable Development Commission.
Mr Porritt said proposals to reward countries and regions that maintained forests, rather than cut them down, were important. "The Kyoto agreement allows compensation only for new planting. It does not allow any financial mechanism for keeping forests intact. It is a perverse incentive because some countries are cutting forests down and claiming quite legitimately large allowances to plant new forest, which is barmy."
In his speech, Mr Cameron said: "My attempts to raise the profile of green issues haven't always been well received. One woman wrote to me saying, 'If you're so concerned about climate change stop breathing.' "