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Zertifizierung
Response
to the critique by Tasso Rezende de Azevedo,
IMAFLORA, Brazil, Andre Giacini de Freitas, IMAFLORA, Brazil, Richard Z.
Donovan, Rainforest Alliance, USA
We are disappointed that the response of supporters of FSC, Tasso Rezende de
Azevedo, Andre Giacini de Freitas, IMAFLORA and Richard Z. Donovan, Rainforest
Alliance, USA, simply avoid addressing the questions we raised in our article.
Firstly, the objective of the article was to dismantle some of the myths used
in the marketing of FSC. Tasso and Co. have not directly contested any of our
assertions, which we thus assume, stand firmly. The article was NOT a promotion
of a Boycott campaign, although we assert that given the present problems with
FSC, a tropical timber boycott in overdeveloped nations, such as Europe and the
States would be an appropriate disincentive for the continued economic culture
of logging in regions such as the Amazon. Secondly, we argue that industrial
scale logging operations of the worlds remaining rainforests is not the means
for their preservation. We question the effectiveness of voluntary market
orientated schemes for controlling logging and suggest that effort might better
be invested working with the State environmental agencies in tightening the
legal and fiscal constraints for logging and investing in more socially and
environmentally sustainable economic alternatives. We feel that the innovations
of "pratical tropical forestry' (which we understand as logging), should focus
on enriching species in degraded secondary forests or creating forests on
deforested land for commercial logging. We are frustrated to see the good
intentions and undoubted capacity of the supporters of FSC, being channelled
into supporting industrial scale logging of the worlds remaining native
forests.
The fact that 80% of tropical timber is for internal consumption was a point
made in our article to demonstrate that presently, certification schemes
interact marginally with the real dynamic of the logging industry in these
regions. We suggest that those wishing to help preserve native rainforest
better identify the real causes of uncontrolled logging and deforestation,
investing in means to contain and reducing incentives for damaging exploitation
of forest resources. With its demand for a well maintained infrastructure of
roads and damaging silviculture practices (which in effect double the timber
extracted per hectare), we feel that the benefits of certified over non
certified logging operations are at best marginal. With the lack of real data
on the impact of certified logging on the complex tropical forest ecosystems,
we question the audacious claims that certification is a "catalyst of forest
conservation". We thus are perturbed at the possibility of expansion of
certification schemes to involve national markets.
The boycott campaign was a tool to raise awareness in European consumers,
about a logging industry threatening the worlds remaining rainforests. As far
as we know, non of the groups participating in boycott stated that it will be
"the solution to tropical deforestation or degradation". Clearly deforestation
and logging is influenced by a series of other factors, reflected in the data
presented by Tasso and Co. However, evidence shows, that the boycott did have
a significant impact on targeted companies. Gethal and the other sawmills in
Itacoatiara were in economic crisis due to the lack of demand for tropical
timber and problems with fining of illegal operations by state agencies. These
companies, are now the driving force for certified logging being promoted as a
means to "save the world's forests".
Citing a detailed list of the minimal technical social and environmental
advantages of certified logging operations does not address the issues that we
are concerned with. It is in fact, the impact that the promotion of certified
logging has outside of the neat, computer controlled management areas that most
concerns us. The "cult-ure" around the FSC has become a serious diversion from
discussions on and interaction with the real issues of forest destruction.
Through certification, massive human, financial, academic and technical
resources are being pumped into promoting the foresters future for the
remaining rainforests' `rational` logging (we could have another protracted
debate about what we understand as rational!). We agree that for local peoples
dependent on forest resources, forests need to be managed. However we do not
understand management, as the defenders of FSC seem to, exclusively as logging.
We assert that the resources spent on Certification of industrial scale logging
might be better directed to supporting use of forest resources within a more
holistic and less linear manner in order to avoid damaging sequels. Without
defining one particular category of forest product, we support the
diversification of land use systems, based on the traditional knowledge of
local peoples who should be the main beneficiaries of any economic
intervention. Here a quote from the article: "Traditional people value most
highly, intact forest which needs to be preserved in its entirety to continue
to yield the enormous diversity of products. This land use represents an
efficiency and sustainability that industrial forestry will never be able to
attain."
In the dismantling of Myth 2, the article questions the certainty of the
assertion made by FSC supporters, and repeated here by Tasso and Co. that if
native forest if not handed over to certified logging operations, it will be
turned over to more damaging land use. We feel that this statement is at best
naive in the context of the forces determining the expansion of logging,
agricultural and colonisation frontiers. We suggest that through establishing
well maintained infrastructure in remote forest regions, certified logging
operations may in fact encourage the more damaging land conversion it is
purporting to avoid.
We are yet to receive any real evidence that contests our arguments. We suggest
that with the growing controversy surrounding FSC, individuals and
organisations who have been involved in its support should have the courage to
re-evaluate its REAL objective. If this is to simply open new markets for
tropical timber, then the marketing currently used is extremely deceptive. If
however the objective is to contribute to the conservation of tropical
rainforests, we argue that FSC is failing on various fronts.
Nicole Freris
Klemens Laschefski
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