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.
The Massachusetts DCR certificate 'disappeared' in April 2009, without any explanation from the FSC or the certifier...[Continue]
This is the first of a series of articles which will be posted in the run-up to 'FSC Friday' (September 25th), with which FSC-Watch aims to highlight some of the on-going problems with FSC certifications.
The world's leading environmental magazine, the Ecologist, has today published a major feature article on the FSC. The article questions the role of FSC in certiyfing plantations, raises doubts about how 'multi-stakeholder' an organisation FSC really is, and questions the motivations of some of the big NGO members of the organisation, including WWF and Greenpeace...[Continue]
(This posting is reproduced from a article in the Courrier de la Planète.)
Ce texte est extrait d'une interview donnée par Simon Counsell au site Mongabay.com le 17 avril 2008. Cette interview faisait suite à celle de Nina Haase, responsable de la communication du Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), publiée sur le même site dix jours plus tôt et réalisée en réponse aux nombreuses critiques formulées à l'encontre du système de certification FSC...[Continue]
We have received the following from 'Alert against the Green Desert Network' in Brazil, reporting on the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST) continuing occupation of part of the illegal (but FSC certified) plantations owened by Veracel. As we previously reported, the Veracel certification has been highly controversial; despite FSC itself finding that the certificate showed "a number of nonconformities with FSC accreditation requirements", the certificate still remains in place and SGS Qualifor, which was responsible for issuing it, remains accredited by FSC...[Continue]
Greenpeace has released a new report detailing major problems and non-compliances in FSC certifications in Sweden.
Stockholm, Thursday 5 March 2009 - Swedish timber with the certification label FSC might come from high conservation value forests that should have been left protected, a new Greenpeace report reveals.
Forest Stewardship Council, FSC, is an international organization certifying forestry and wood products, such as paper and furniture. The FSC label should guarantee that the forest companies' timber and other products derive from forestry with high environmental standards...[Continue]
A new research paper (see abstract below) on the behavioural patterns of forest elephants has dealt a major blow to the myth of 'sustainable logging' in the rainforests of the Congo Basin. One of the areas specifically referred to in the paper as being negatively impacted is covered by the concessions of Congolaise Industrielle des Bois (CIB) that is currently being 'pre-assessed' for FSC certification by Rainforest Alliance SmartWood.
CIB has already gained FSC certification for two of its five concessions in northern Republic of Congo, which together cover 1.3 million hectares of once pristine rainforest...[Continue]
A final blow has been dealt to the credibility of the now 'self-suspended' FSC certifier SGS, by a Brazilian Federal court decision that nearly one hundred thousand hectares of eucalyptus plantation owned by SGS-certified company Veracel were planted illegally and will have to be torn down within 12 months. The company has also been ordered to pay $12 million in fines for causing environmental damage.
Given the seriousness of the failures with the Veracel certification, combined with what have evidently been gross certification failures in other countries including Guyana, Spain and Poland, FSC-Watch believes that the FSC Secretariat should now impose a global and indefinite suspension on SGS's FSC accreditation...[Continue]
In a shock announcement, South Africa-based SGS Qualifor - FSC's second largest certifier - has said that it has taken a 'business decision' not to issue any further FSC forest management certificates, pending a 'review' of it's forest management certification processes. The announcement, made on the FSC's website, is believed to pre-empt an imminent decision by the FSC Secretariat to formally suspend SGS's accreditation worldwide...[Continue]
FSC-Watch receives many queries and messages of concern, including from industry, as to why the FSC is helping to undermine efforts at paper recycling by allowing the certification of paper with little or no recycled content. We have now received the following article from the May/June 2008 Eco-Journal of the Manitoba Eco-Network, Canada, which we are happy to reproduce.
The article provides interesting insights into how SmartWood's
FSC certification of the output from Tembec's Pine Falls operations has helped destroy production of recycled paper...[Continue]
The following information has been supplied by the Russian NGO, SPOK.
This is yet another example of an FSC certificate issued by Rainforest Alliance SmartWood having to be challenged by NGOs. The logging company in question, Zapkarelles, has a concession of over 800,000 hectares of old growth forest in Karelia.
Regional NGO SPOK, Karelia, requests cancellation of FSC certificate for company 'Zapkarelles'
At the beginning of June, Karelian environmental NGO SPOK wrote an official letter to the Russian national office of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) requesting investigation of the forestry practises of forestry company 'Zapkarelles'...[Continue]
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