Launching an appeal to help save Sweden’s remaining old-growth forests, the NGO networkSkydda Skogen (Protect the Forest) has said that “major violations against the FSC standard are made by FSC-certified forest companies in Sweden.” In its website, Skydda Skogen goes on to say:
SGS Qualifor
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.
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil
A couple of weeks ago, FSC-Watch received this email from Wally Menne of TimberWatch in South Africa. It raises an interesting point – the FSC International Secretariat produces almost exclusively good news, no matter what is happening in the outside world. So far, Wally has not received either a reply or an acknowledgment of his email. We will, of course, be happy to post FSC’s response when it appears.
Human rights abuses, land conflicts, broken promises – the reality of carbon ‘offset’ projects in Uganda
World Rainforest Movement recently published a report I wrote with Timothy Byakola of the Ugandan NGO Climate Development Initiatives, about an FSC-certified carbon sink project at Mount Elgon in Uganda. The report, “‘A funny place to store carbon’: UWA-FACE Foundation’s tree planting project in Mount Elgon National Park, Uganda”, includes a section on the SGS-Qualifor certification of the project.
FSC audit of SGS leads to suspension of largest tropical logging certificate
It was announced today that FSC’s largest certificate for tropical forest management, had been suspended. The certificate, issued by SGS-Qualifor to the Barama company, the Guyanese subsidiary of the controversial Malaysian-based logging transnational, Samling, was put on hold following an investigation by the FSC’s Accreditation Service International (ASI) in November 2006.
FSC fails to uphold Indigenous Rights at Mount Elgon, Uganda
Since 1994, a Dutch organisation called the FACE Foundation has been planting trees in Mount Elgon National Park in Uganda. The FACE Foundation aims to sell carbon credits based on the amount of carbon stored in the trees planted. FACE aims to plant a total of 25,000 hectares of which 8,500 hectares has been planted.
Slovak environmental NGOs ‘sickened’ by re-certification of Presov Forest District: the FSC’s failings laid bare
Last month, FSC-Watch reported on the ‘race to the bottom’ of FSC standards for certification of the Presov Forest District in Slovakia.
The race has now been run, and the certificate – which was withdrawn only a few weeks ago by Soil Association WoodMark – has now been ‘re-awarded’ by SGS. One representative of the Slovak environmental movement has said that they are ‘sickened’ by this development, and have dismissed the certificate as “nothing but greenwashing”. Forests managed by the Presov Forest District are, they say, amongst the worst managed state forests in Slovakia, and the certificate will help no-one but the businesses involved in the FSC.
Certification in the Congo: a cause for celebration or confusion?
Along with WWF, Greenpeace recently joined a ‘love-in’ with African rainforest logger, Congolaise Industrielle des Bois (CIB), to celebrate the arrival into Switzerland of the first shipment of CIB’s FSC-certified timber.
Guyana’s certified ‘Plunder without Profit’
A new report from researcher Janette Bulkan has cast an interesting light on the Guyanese logging industry, including FSC-certified company Barama.
The report seems to confirm what many Guyanese have long known: that the logging industry is not much good for anybody other than the logging companies themselves. According to the new research, as reported in the Starkbroek News, even the FSC-certified Barama brings little or no value to this desperately poor country. Bulkan has found that, whilst Barama’s operations occupy more than a quarter of the country’s entire production forest, it only, for example, employs 300 Guyanese, or 2% of the forestry workforce. The company does not even pay any export taxes.
What is the FSC certifying?
One of the underlying reasons for the existence of this site is that it is difficult, or impossible, even for the FSC members, to pick their way through the relentless ‘public relations’ output from the Secretariat, and to know what is really going on within the organisation. For example, whilst we hear repeatedly about the expanding area of the Earth’s surface under FSC certification, we never seem to hear about the complaints that have been filed about any of these certificates. We never seem to hear that, for example, almost the entire Indonesian NGO community has, for several years, been calling for a cessation of the issuing of any new FSC certificates in their country (and which has been completely ignored by a number of certifiers and by the FSC itself).
FSC-Watch 