World Rainforest Movement expresses strong criticism of the FSC in its statement reacting to the news that Veracel’s monoculture eucalyptus plantations are now FSC certified. WRM notes that Veracel is the “last piece in a chain of failures” by FSC.
Brazil
Military Police violently evict women protesters from Stora Enso’s plantations in Brazil
On Tuesday, 4th March 2008, about 900 women from the International Peasant Movement Via Campesina were violently evicted by the Military Police from an area of 2,100 hectares of Stora Enso’s plantations at the Tarumã Farm in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. According to a statement from Via Campesina about 60 women were badly injured and 800 were arrested. Meanwhile, 250 children at the camp were separated from their parents. Tents were destroyed and tools taken from the women.
FSC wood debacle lands city authority in court
A US timber company is suing a New Jersey city authority over its cancellation of a controversial order of FSC certified lumber for repair of its ocean-front boardwalks. In the latest development in this long-running debacle, which has exposed gaping weaknesses in the FSC’s Chain of Custody system, the Louis Grasmick Lumber company of Baltimore has said that it will sue the Ocean City authorities for $1.2 million.
SCS certification of Jurua Forestal, Brazil: FSC plumbs new depths of bad practice
To some people, such as Mayor Salvatore Perillo of Ocean City, New Jersey, USA, the FSC represents the ‘Gold Standard’ of forest certification; an assurance that wood comes from well-managed and properly independently audited sources. But Mayor Perillo, and many others, would do well to know what lies behind the FSC’s claims. One of the more shocking examples – Jurua Forestal Ltda, which is felling timber in the Brazilian rainforest – is a potential supplier of ipe timber for the imminent repair of Perillo’s Ocean City sea-front boardwalks.
Veracel certification would be yet another disaster for FSC
Press release from World Rainforest Movement, 17 September 2007:
Veracel: A test case for the FSC
This month’s WRM Bulletin includes an editorial about FSC’s certification of industrial tree plantations and two articles about the assessment of Veracel, which is currently being carried out by SGS. The editorial and the two articles are reproduced in full below:
Worthy of the FSC logo? Dispossession and misery in Brazil’s plantation industry
We are taking the liberty of reproducing here a powerful personal insight into the proposed FSC certification of Brazilian eucalyptus plantation company, Veracel, which was published in the latest edition of the bulletin of the World Rainforest Movement.
Study explodes myth of ‘sustainable logging’ in Amazonian rainforests
A little-known study that first appeared last year shows what some environmentalists have been saying for years – that most timber exploitation in the Amazon is not ‘sustainable’, and does not prevent deforestation but actually promotes it. The new findings will likely lead to calls for tighter controls or even complete prohibition on ‘certification’ of logging operations in such regions.
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).
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.
FSC-Watch 