A new report for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has cast serious doubts about the prospects for certification of biofuels, pointing to the failures of timber certification. The report, entitled ‘Biofuels: Is the Cure Worse than the Disease’ (available for download below), was presented to the OECD’s Round Table on Sustainable Development in Paris in September. It warns that timber certification has failed after many years to come up with credible Chain of Custody systems. The report also point out that certification doesn’t necessarily help to address the underlying problems of either non-sustainable timber or biofuel production because the problem simply gets displaced elsewhere.
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What, exactly, is FSC’s position on GM trees?
“Use of genetically modified organisms shall be prohibited,” states Criterion 6.8 of FSC’s Principles and Criteria. That appears to be clear. Strictly interpreted this would mean that a company carrying out laboratory research into GE trees (and/or financing such research) should not be certified under the FSC system, because that would involve the use of genetically modified organisms. Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, FSC’s Certification Bodies (assessors) don’t take such a strict interpretation of criterion 6.8.
Greenpeace attacked for supporting FSC: call for ‘suppressed’ report to be published
The US-based ‘e-activist’ network Ecological Internet has launched a letter-writing campaign aimed at Greenpeace, asking them to withdraw their support for FSC-certified ‘ancient forest logging’. The campaign demands that Greenpeace publishes a report on ‘problematic’ FSC certificates, which is believed to have been under investigation by the green group for many months. The new campaign is specifically directed at Grant Rosoman, of Greenpeace New Zealand, who is asked to resign as Chair of FSC’s international Board. Greenpeace’s forest activists worldwide are also being targetted, and are likely to received many thousands of protest e-mails.
FSC’s new ‘Global Strategy’: a recipe for disaster?
The FSC is currently consulting on the preparation of a new ‘Global Strategy’ that will guide the organisation for the next 5 years (the strategy is, we learn, open for public consultation only until June 15th although, given that many FSC stakeholders seem to have found out about this only very late in the day, we hope that FSC will extend this deadline). A full copy of the draft strategy is available for download at the end of this posting.
FSC’s complaints procedures in chaos
One of the essential components of a credible certification scheme is that there must be some kind of mechanism such that stakeholders who dispute decisions about certification standards, specific certificates or other matters, can challenge them and seek redress. FSC’s handling of complaints has been abysmal for many years, but now it seems to be in total disarray. Apart from anything else, FSC is probably not currently compliant with the requirements of ISEAL, the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling Alliance, to which the FSC is affiliated.
FSC: 10 unanswered questions. And one new one.
One of things that we at FSC-Watch worry about is that the FSC seems to have such a poor memory – so poor, in fact, that it keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. So, to help it along, we are issuing here a list of some of the questions we have asked over the last few months, and that have never been answered. And we have an important new question too.
Hard-up certifier seeks job ‘on the side’
Up until a few years ago, FSC’s accredited certifiers were prohibited from certifying for other forest certification schemes, because of the obvious conflict of interest that this would represent. But, as has been the way of things in the FSC, such a ban represented an obstacle to the increase of the certifiers’ profits, and was therefore duly done away with. (One of the more bizarre justifications offered for this profound weakening of the FSC’s rules, from the now Chair of FSC’s Board, Grant Rosoman, was that, if the certifiers were prohibited from ‘moonlighting’ for other schemes, then they would simply set up nominally separate organisations to get around this rule. So much for the notion that FSC’s certifiers are required to work to the highest ethical standards…)
Exporting the FSC ‘model’ to biofuels?
FSC-Watch was interested to learn recently that FSC Executive Director, Heiko Liedeker, has joined the Steering Board of the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB), which is based in the Federal Polytechnic (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
FSC Chain of Custody: into the realm of fantasy
The FSC is set to continue on its seemingly inexorable slide into becoming a ‘self-certification’ system with new changes to the Chain of Custody procedures. As announced in the most recent FSC Newsletter (see below), the FSC is currently piloting what are called ‘multi-site’ procedures, in which the FSC’s accredited certifiers would not actually check all the relevent company facilities in order to issue a Chain of Custody certificate.
Reforming the FSC by Competitive Tendering
One the major structural problems that seems to underlie much of what is going wrong in the FSC is that contracts for certification assessments are arranged directly between logging companies and the FSC’s accredited certifiers. Because of this – and especially because the award of a certificate will ensure future profits for the certifiers from monitoring and re-assessments – certifiers have a strong financial incentive to award certificates even when the logging company does not comply with the FSC’s Principles and Criteria.
FSC-Watch 