In February 2015, the Forest Stewardship Council announced that it was kicking out Danish timber giant Dalhoff Larsen and Horneman (DLH). FSC did so after investigations by Global Witness revealed that DLH had traded illegal timber from Liberia.
But how did a company trading illegal timber get FSC certification in the first place?
A programme this week on AlJazeera’s People and Power reports on destructive logging in Latvia – including the fact that FSC-certified Latvian timber is still on sale in the UK, despite the fact that the FSC certified was suspended on 16 July 2010.
Another of the many deeply troubling but now, at least temporarily, vanished FSC certficates exposed by FSC-Watch is that of the rainforest logging ‘SEFAC group’ in Cameroon. The SEFAC certificate disapeared off FSC’s certified forest database sometime during 2009. Neither FSC nor SEFAC itself, nor the logger’s certifier, ICILA, provided an explanation for this.
FSC-Watch has several times in the last eighteen months reported on the FSC-certified ‘chainsaw massacre’ taking place in the state forest lands of Massachusetts, USA. Managed by the state’s Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), 285,000 acreas of forest had been certified by California-based Scientific Certification Systems Inc (SCS) since 2004.
On 19 June 2008, Spanish pulp company ENCE lost its FSC certification in Spain, when its subsidiaries Norte Forestal (Norfor) and Silvasur had their certificate withdrawn. Norfor manages just over 12,000 hectares of industrial tree plantations in the northeast of Spain and Silvasur has almost 70,000 hectares in Andalusia. Both companies were certified by SGS Qualifor in October 2004. The Norfor certificate was questioned by Greenpeace, WWF, theAsociación Pola Defensa Da Ría, Verdegaia, and Association for the Ecological Defence of Galicia. In October 2007, Accreditation Services International reported that the environmental concerns were justified, and that Norfor was non-compliant with FSC’s Principles and Criteria.
Earlier this year, we reported on the ‘anomalous’ circumstances surrounding the certification of Wijma, a company logging in the rainforests of Cameroon. Wijma’s certifier, Bureau Veritas was ‘suspended’ because of Wijma’s certificate, though the certificate itself was allowed to remain in place. Now we learn that, in a complete reversal, Burea Veritas has been ‘re-accredited’ to FSC, but Wijma has mysteriously disappeared off the list of currently certified companies.
FSC-Watch 