The Peoples’ Permanent Tribunal* which has been investigating the social and environmental impacts of companies in Colombia, has recently heard evidence against a number of companies, including two that are certified by the FSC: Smurfit Kapa Cartón de Colombia and Pizano SA. (Smurfit was certified for FSC by SGS Qualifor; in contravention of FSC’s requirements, there was no information about this certificate available on SGS’s website at the date of this posting. Pizano was certified by SmartWood.)
Author: FSC-Watch
Brazil: V&M ‘withdraws’ from FSC
On March 1st, FSC-Watch reported on the murder of a peasant by guards of the company Vallourec and Mannesman, which was certified for the FSC by SGS-Qualifor.
On 15th March, the company released the announcement below, in Portuguese, communicating “its voluntary decision to leave the FSC after 8 years of very close relationship”. The reason the company gives in the release is that it does not agree with the way the audit was carried out by the certifying body (SGS).
FSC-certified Coillte, Ireland: “environmentally destructive, rapacious”
The following letter recently appeared in the Irish newspaper, the Examiner.
It paints a disturbing picture of the environmental impact of the FSC-certified state forestry company, Coillte, which controls around 400,000 hectares of land in Ireland. FSC-Watch has reported on Coillte several times in the past – but the certificate remains as a stain on FSC’s credibility.
Peasant murdered by employees of FSC certfied plantation company, Brazil
FSC-Watch has received the following communication* from Rede Alerta Contra o Deserto Verde (Action Network Against Green Deserts), Brazil, concerning the shooting dead of a local peasant by the armed guards of Vallourec Mannesman, a eucalyptus plantation company in Minas Gerais state, Brazil, certified for the FSC by SGS.
Bureau Veritas accreditation suspended in Cameroon
FSC-Watch has previously reported on the highly controversial certification of Wijma, a company logging in the rainforests of Cameroon which the independent observer of forests in that country has repeatedly found to be involved in illegalities.
The certification has now led to the suspension of Wijma’s certifer, Bureau Veritas (formerly Eurocertifor). We have been asked to post the following article, which is submitted by Danielle van Oijen, Forest Campaigner, Milieudefensie / Friends of The Earth Netherlands.
FSC audit of SGS leads to suspension of largest tropical logging certificate
It was announced today that FSC’s largest certificate for tropical forest management, had been suspended. The certificate, issued by SGS-Qualifor to the Barama company, the Guyanese subsidiary of the controversial Malaysian-based logging transnational, Samling, was put on hold following an investigation by the FSC’s Accreditation Service International (ASI) in November 2006.
Accredited certifier suspended
For only the second time in its 13-year history, the FSC has suspended the accreditation of one of its certifiers.
However, as with most of FSC’s dealings with the certifiers, the reasons for the suspension of the Swiss based Institut für Marktökologie (IMO), on 22nd September, are not entirely clear. All that the FSC Secretariat has said is that the decision was taken against IMO “for performing new evaluations and issuing new FSC forest management certificates in Chile” – and even this information was buried in an unassuming document on FSC’s website.
How not to run a national FSC process – an example from Ireland
Arguably, the National Initiatives (NIs) have been amongst the most successful parts of the FSC ‘project’: some NIs have genuinely brought together disparate interests to find acceptable compromises, which have allowed for national or regional standards to be developed. These national standards are a key element in ensuring that what the FSC’s accredited certifiers certify is acceptable to local ‘stakeholders’.
Slovak environmental NGOs ‘sickened’ by re-certification of Presov Forest District: the FSC’s failings laid bare
Last month, FSC-Watch reported on the ‘race to the bottom’ of FSC standards for certification of the Presov Forest District in Slovakia.
The race has now been run, and the certificate – which was withdrawn only a few weeks ago by Soil Association WoodMark – has now been ‘re-awarded’ by SGS. One representative of the Slovak environmental movement has said that they are ‘sickened’ by this development, and have dismissed the certificate as “nothing but greenwashing”. Forests managed by the Presov Forest District are, they say, amongst the worst managed state forests in Slovakia, and the certificate will help no-one but the businesses involved in the FSC.
Certifying the uncertifiable: Soil Association WoodMark, Perhutani, and human rights abuses
The Soil Association’s FSC-accredited certifier WoodMark has just announced a ‘stakeholder consultation’ for the potential certification of two management units of the huge Indonesian plantation company, Perhutani.
FSC-Watch 