A front page splash story in The Independent that Marks & Spencer was selling garden furniture made from illegally felled Indonesian nyatoh was the last thing the company needed. Already faced with declining sales and a takeover bid, being accused of complicity in rainforest destruction was not the ideal turn of events. So, predictably enough, when TTJ contacted M&S this week, we found that it had dropped the allegedly offending furniture supplier like a hot brick.
Of course, no right-thinking timber trader advocates the use of illegal wood and, if M&S’s furniture was of dubious origin, it was quite right to dump it (although the speed with which it acted suggests it didn’t exactly investigate the matter in depth).
But all that said, what this whole episode also highlighted once more was that, when it comes to timber and the environment, we still have a way to go to ensure the trade’s viewpoint gets a fair crack of the media whip and is picked up by the public and politicians. For the time being, environmental activists continue to set the agenda.
The Independent’s story was inspired by a Greenpeace report, which also made similar allegations about timber products sold by the currently less newsworthy retailers Asda and John Lewis. There was a fleeting mention of the Tropical Forest Trust, but no other coverage of timber industry efforts to stamp out illegal logging. The Greenpeace line that the FSC has the only credible certification scheme was followed to the letter and Liberal Democrat environment spokesperson Sue Doughty lined up to say more or less that consumers could save the rainforest simply by stopping buying Indonesian timber products.
The message was that when it comes to deforestation, felling trees for timber is the chief villain of the piece. It was only when you turned to the inside pages that you discovered the role played by population pressures, poverty and agricultural land clearance – and no mention was made of the fact that sensitive exploitation of tropical timber can provide a vital incentive for people not to grub up trees for fuel or to plant soya instead.
