In October 2007, the Forest Stewardship Council disassociated from the notorious forest destroyer Asia Pulp and Paper. In a statement, FSC announced that,
(more…)FSC disassociated from APP in October 2007 because of substantial, publicly available information that APP was involved in destructive forestry practices, which brought it into conflict with the FSC mission.
By Chris Lang
At it’s General Assembly in Bali last week, FSC’s members voted to allow companies to be certified that have cleared forest to make way for industrial tree plantations between 1994 and 2000. In order to be certified, the company has to restore an area of forest equal to the area they destroyed. The cut-off date has now been moved to 2020. Any company converting forest to plantations after 2020 cannot be certified. Until FSC makes another decision to scrap its cut-off date, that is.
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“FSC controlled wood is material from acceptable sources that can be mixed with FSC-certified material in products that carry the FSC Mix label.”
That’s how FSC describes “Controlled wood” on its website. The reality is that FSC is no guarantee of legality.
In fact, “controlled wood” doesn’t even exclude products from companies that FSC has disassociated itself from.
Two weeks ago, ARTE broadcast a documentary that was extremely critical of FSC. FSC responded with a statement on its website, and an 8-page “Fact check”. FSC’s response illustrates that the organisation is in denial about the problems within the FSC system.
For their recent ARTE documentary about FSC, journalists Manfred Ladwig and Thomas Reutter travel to Russia. FSC-certified forest in Russia covers an area that together is larger than Denmark.
For the recent documentary “Who is Protecting our Forests?”, ARTE’s journalists Manfred Ladwig and Thomas Reutter visit Industrie Forestière de Ouesso’s Ngombé logging concession in the Republic of Congo. The concession covers more than one million hectares, all of which is FSC-certified, according to the documentary.[1] IFO is part of Danzer GmbH, a company registered in Switzerland.
Greenpeace International has (at long last) decided to leave the Forest Stewardship Council. In an statement, Greenpeace International announces the decision:
Greenpeace International was a founding member of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), but now has decided not to renew its FSC membership due to inconsistent implementation and failures to protect forests.
This is a massive blow to FSC’s credibility.
Motion 65 to the FSC’s General Assembly, its highest decision-making authority, was tabled by Judy Rodrigues of Greenpeace International. The motion was intended to set out new requirements for the FSC when certifying logging companies in what Greenpeace describes as ‘intact forest landscapes’ (or IFLs). These are important large areas of forest which remain undamaged, and are rapidly declining and being fragmented – often by commercial logging – the world over. Greenpeace rightly wishes to see these forests better protected – but has failed to prevent the FSC from legitimising their destruction.
Greenpeace has just released a very critical report about FSC’s failure to prevent forest destruction even in FSC certified logging operations in Russia. The report is titled, “FSC in Russia: Certifying the Destruction of Intact Forest Landscapes” and can be downloaded here. Greenpeace reports that,
The FSC is failing to distinguish good forest management practices from the typical model of unsustainable forest exploitation widely employed in intact boreal, or taiga, forests. It is therefore failing in its mission to be a tool for forest protection.
FSC-Watch 