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:
Plantations
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.
WoodMark pioneers ‘continuous deterioration’ certification in Ireland
Finally, as the FSC’s inspectors arrive at its doors for its annual accreditation inspection, Soil Association WoodMark has produced the long-awaited and overdue report of its 2006 surveillance of controversial Irish state forestry company, Coillte.
Ireland: embarrassment mounts for Soil Association
More than three months after its most recent surveillance visit, Soil Association Woodmark has still failed to produce a Public Summary report stating whether, or under what conditions, it believes that the Irish state forestry company, Coillte, can remain FSC-certified.
Swaziland: FSC credibility hits all time low with certification of Sappi
In November 2004, on a visit to Swaziland with Wally Menne of TimberWatch, I saw the destruction caused by fifty years of industrial forestry “development”. Many of the plantations were established under a British “aid” programme run by the Colonial Development Corporation (now called CDC Group – a private equity company whose sole shareholder is the UK Department for International Development).
FSC Certified operations fast losing credibility in Australia
This posting has been submitted by Anthony Amis, Friends of the Earth Melbourne, Australia.
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.
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.
Irish Environmental and Social Groups Unite to Demand Removal of Coillte Certificate
The following was submitted by the Irish Environmental and Social Stakeholders’ Alliance:
FSC-Watch 