Malaysian Timber Firms Seek Certification to Boost Rainforest Sales
10/05/00
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY
Malaysian tropical timber exporters are trying desperately to legitimize their deadly rainforest harvests. In their own country, and in essentially all major remaining old-growth forest regions, Malaysian logging companies are the biggest threat to the World's biodiversity and continued ecosystem functioning; practicing unprecedented intensive and extensive industrial mining of ancient old growth forests wherever they can bribe or otherwise manipulate access to endangered old-growth forests. After years of outrageous abuses, they are now actively courting certification of their industrial logging practices in response to increasing demands for independent confirmation that forest products come from socially and environmentally responsible and sustainable sources. And it appears that the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which has already thrown itself on the sword of forest certification as a means to ensure global forest sustainability, has bitten on their offer-perhaps prematurely.
It is absolutely essential at this critical juncture in the determination of what activities are allowable in the World's remaining ancient forests that FSC certification not become merely a passport to log and thus ecologically diminish the majority of the world's remaining old-growth forests-albeit in a somewhat less destructive fashion than has historically been the case. When a forest is harvested for the first time, it irreparably changes forever. Malaysian timber industry pledges of a new found commitment to ecologically sustainable natural forest management must not be restricted to management of their own forests. The Malaysian timber vultures must pledge an immediate de-escalation of their aggressive and deadly targeting of all remaining forest wildernesses worldwide- Brazil, Papua New Guinea and Cameroon to name but a few. The must be NO reduction in FSC standards as incentives to pull the timber mafia into the certification standard. And above all, there is an urgent and immediate need to establish procedures to determine when preservation of rainforests is preferable to any logging, albeit in a certified method; and intensified efforts to fund strict preservation, including offsetting lost local revenues. I harbor grave doubts that these grotesquely unsustainable Malaysian timber miners deserve to be granted the privilege of managing the World's biological heritage.
g.b.
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Malaysia teams up with greenies to boost timber sales abroad
Copyright 2000 Deutsche Presse-Agentur
October 3, 2000
Gwen Benjamin, dpa
Tropical timber exporter Malaysia has teamed up with foreign environmental groups to improve its forestry practices in a strategic move to win green-conscious buyers abroad.
Malaysia, which once viewed "eco-labelling" as a market barrier, last year bowed to consumer demands and set up a national "certification" council that aims to reassure foreign buyers that the wood was harvested in accordance with good environmental practices.
"If you can't beat them, join them. That's what Malaysia is doing," said Balu Perumal, who heads the forest conservation unit of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Malaysia.
Aware that foreign consumers might doubt the Malaysian certification standards, the Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC) has begun talks to try and win endorsement from the Mexico-based Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
Although there are various certification schemes run by Western agencies and environmental groups, the FSC, which is an independent NGO, is recognised as the premier accreditation body.
"FSC acceptance of our national standards will certainly help our markets abroad," said Chew Lye Teng, the head of the state-run MTCC.
"The presence of the FSC is very strong, especially in European countries like Germany and the U.K, which is why we want to work with them," he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, in an interview.
"We say 'yes' to certification not just to meet the market's demands, but also to ensure good forest management in our country," he added.
Malaysia's timber exports rose 20 per cent last year to 17.1 billion ringgit (4.5 billion dollars), with most exports going to East Asian markets including China and Japan.
Malaysia's timber authorities will meet with FSC officials in Kuala Lumpur in December, where they will discuss the setting up of a Malaysian national working group - one of the conditions demanded by the FSC.
Apart from industry players, the group's members must comprise environmentalists, indigenous peoples and other social justice groups that have in the past accused the Malaysian government of indiscriminate logging.
"It'll be a long process before we can talk of FSC endorsement in Malaysia," admitted Chew, as FSC would withhold approval unless all group members support Malaysia's certification standards.
Malaysia began working on its own certification scheme about seven years ago, based on the International Tropical Timber Organization's set of criteria for sustainable forest management among member countries.
Malaysia is one of the first countries in Southeast Asia to try and set up an FSC-recognised national working group that will handle the whole process of assessing, monitoring and certifying timber from sustainably managed forests.
Currently, the FSC is invited by individual timber firms in the region to certify selected forest plantations.
In Malaysia's Sabah state on Borneo island, the FSC has endorsed products from the 55,000-hectare, state-owned Deramakot plantation under a programme partly funded by the German GTZ aid agency.
Another plantation in Perak state is also in talks with the FSC.
Malaysia has already in the past four years sold "green" timber to the Netherlands, in a joint programme with the Kerhault Foundation, an independent Dutch timber verification body.
The Netherlands is Malaysia's biggest European market and buyer of sawn timber, with import volume last year up by 1.2 per cent to 532.2 million ringgit (140 million dollars). Malaysian sawn timber exports to the E.U., however, dropped by 2.9 per cent in volume last year.
Malaysia opted to work with Kerhault after its Dutch market plunged by a third in the mid-1990s because buyers were shunning non-labelled wood products.
However, Kerhault's managing director Kees Bosdijk voiced concern over a recent proliferation of certification schemes by green groups, saying the "tribal warfare" only confused consumers.
"One single label is preferred," he said at a recent conference in Kuala Lumpur. New schemes include the Pan-European Forest Certification, the Pan-African Forest Certification, while Finland has its own national system.
The WWF's Perumal said tropical timber exporters like Malaysia and environmental groups, which were once at logger-heads, have since had a "change of mindset" and dropped their "confrontational stance."
"In fact, some green groups accuse us of being too forgiving because they see certification as a licence to log," he said.
"But we say that if we don't start on this, logging will still happen and we're going to lose the forests anyway," he said. The WWF sits on the board of the MTCC and is also a member of the FSC.
Perumal said the WWF was also trying to get FSC-endorsed national working groups in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Cambodia and Vietnam.
He dismissed fears that timber exporters may abuse their FSC tags by lax implementation of pledged conservation policies.
"You can track the timber. If there's any abuse, there is the big danger of losing certification. Certification itself is the carrot for exporters," he said.
However, Julian Newman, of the U.S. and British-based Environmental Investigation Agency, said the FSC system was a "good idea on paper" but could become a "fake documentation system" if not well regulated.
Greedy logging companies could see the FSC label as a way to make more money because they can sell timber in Europe for much more if they can prove it is legal by showing a certificate.
"They probably looked at this and said, 'The way forward is to change our spots a bit," he said recently in Jakarta.