Only the prices of tropical timber, an increasingly scarce commodity, rose substantially (about 17 percent) from 1998 to 1999.

Steps are at last being taken to create a formal structure for checking the sources of sustainably managed tropical timber.

Japan, the largest importer of tropical timber, on Friday pledged $2 million that made the start of the project possible.

There is also the corollary that the economic significance of tropical timber will ensure its survival (Cross 1988).

Despite its concern, Europe is still the biggest importer of tropical timber.

We should be buying tropical timber so that it remains valuable.

The present impending wood famine may, the speaker said, be averted by the use of tropical timber.

Instead, they seemed informed by commercial interests, with troops often placed in proximity to diamond mines and stands of tropical timber.

The region currently supplies only 5 percent of the world's trade in tropical timber, most of it from Brazil.

United Nations figures show tropical timber as worth $7.5 billion a year in an $85-billion-a-year global industry.