06/14/00 -- Timber Certification Plan Aims to Protect World's Forests

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Timber Certification Plan Aims to Protect World's Forests

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Archives

http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest Conservation

06/14/00

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

Efforts to certify that forests have been sustainably managed have

tremendous potential to maintain worldwide natural forest cover. For

a decade I have supported community eco-timber projects in Papua New

Guinea, and realize their significance in meeting local needs.

Certification is the best hope to maintain natural, managed forests

that are more than tree plantations, to ensure continued ecological

functionality and conservation of biodiversity, and to meet

reasonable development needs. However, supporters of certified

forestry must remain vigilante. Environmentalists must not allow

certification to become a meaningless buzzword to legitimatize

commercial logging of most remaining ancient forests. Any timber

that is "certified" must meet management standards that are at least

as rigorous as current Forest Stewardship Council criteria and strive

for ecological sustainability. There must be mechanisms established

to ensure that the maximum amounts of preserved lands are maintained

within and adjacent to certifiably managed areas. At large spatial

scales such as landscapes, bioregions and continents; unmanaged and

strictly protected ecological core areas are a requirement for

sustainability of ecological and evolutionary processes over the

long-term. To the extent possible, certified forestry should focus

on secondary and regenerating forests, leaving ancient old-growth

forests as benchmarks for the inevitable age of forest and ecological

restoration.

g.b.

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Title: Timber certification plan aims to protect world's forests

Date: June 7, 2000

Byline: Margaret Lowrie

LONDON (CNN) -- A pioneering wood project is under way in dozens of

nations to ensure forests survive civilization's ever-increasing

appetite for wood.

"The Forest Stewardship Council is the first certification scheme

which has established criteria for sustainable management of tropical

as well as temperate and boreal forests," said Claude Martin,

director-general of the conservation group World Wide Fund for

Nature-International.

Their mechanism is a new market label, recognizable by consumers,

called the FSC tag.

The tag will indicate that wood comes from trees grown and harvested

in an environmentally and socially responsible manner, under

internationally agreed upon guidelines.

At a conference in London this week, WWF announced new commitments

from Sweden, Canada and Brazil to independent forest certification at

a conference.

Concurrent with the conference, London hosted the largest global trade

fair for certified timber and pulp. A variety of furnishings, chairs,

floors, pencils and doors displayed their environmental pedigree at

the fair.

More than 1,000 people from 50 different countries attended the

gatherings, representing a third of the organizations harvesting the

world's wood.

"We intend to utilize our forests for a long time and so we have our

own interests in maintaining the forest and managing the forest,"

said Gunner Palme of AssiDoman, an international packaging company. He

said he likes the certification process because it gives customers a

choice.

Environmentalists blame commercial exploitation for the rapid rate at

which the worlds forests are disappearing.

The WWF says 10,000 square miles of the Congo Basin forests alone are

destroyed every year. Almost 88 percent of Asia's forests are already

gone. And several Asian countries face complete deforestation. Parts

of Latin America face similar dangers.

The FSC hopes to prevent such a bleak future. A network of some 600

companies around the world are already enrolled in its certification

system, accounting for some 56 million acres of forest in 32 different

countries.

The certification program is designed to ensure the survival of the

planet's forests and the industries that harvest them, and in the

process give consumers a choice that doesn't cost the Earth.

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