The Forest Stewardship Council standard for Sweden “allows forests to be converted into tree plantations, through the use of clear-cut logging, soil scarification (ridging) and chemical fertilisation”, writes Amanda Tas of Protect the Forest in a recent piece on the Plantation Definition Discussion website.
Green Resources’ industrial tree plantations in Uganda continue to cause problems for local communities. Whenever journalists or academics document the problems, the company points out that its plantations are FSC-certified.
A company called Eucalyptus Fibre Congo S.A. is alleged to have paid at least US$76,500 in “black money” to Congolese public officials in 2012. At the time, the company held an FSC chain of custody certificate.
Three weeks ago, Arnaud Labrousse sent an email to Kim Carstensen, FSC’s Director General. Labrousse has a few questions for FSC. Unfortunately, FSC seems reluctant to answer them.
On 9 April 2015, Brazil’s Technical Commission on Biosafety (CTNBio) approved the commercial use of genetically engineered eucalyptus trees. The application came from FuturaGene, a company owned by pulp and paper giant Suzano.
Suzano’s plantations are FSC-certified. Estevão do Prado Braga, who works for Suzano, is a member of FSC’s Board.
Yet FSC’s Policy of Association does not allow FSC to associate with companies that introduce genetically modified organisms into forestry operations.
Almuth Ernsting is co-director of Biofuelwatch, an NGO that works “to raise awareness of the negative impacts of industrial biofuels and bioenergy on biodiversity, human rights, food sovereignty and climate change”. She contributed this guest post to FSC-Watch.
It’s official: the FSC is now setting out to use its grotesque Controlled (sic) Wood Policy in order to ‘launder’ wood from areas experiencing recent deforestation into the FSC certified wood supply chain.
Geasphere the NGO working in South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland dedicated to the protection of ecological integrity, has released a new short video explaining why FSC’s certification of plantations in South Africa are in clear contravention of the FSC’s Principles and Criteria, and how the P&C themselves are defective in ensuring that FSC certifed timber is “environmentally appropriate”.
The FSC sank to new levels of farce this week with a decision that in effect means that the organisation has lodged a complaint against itself.
On 22 September 2011, Oxfam released a report about a UK-based company called New Forests. Oxfam’s researchers visited the company’s plantations in Uganda and found that more than 22,000 people were kicked off the land to make way for the company’s monocultures. Oxfam made public what FSC’s certifying body, SGS, had somehow managed to ignore for the past two years. Accreditation Services International (ASI) in turn found out nothing about the evictions when it carried out an audit of SGS in 2010. New Forests Company has put out a statement explaining that it “takes Oxfam’s allegations extremely seriously and will conduct an immediate and thorough investigation”.
