I know that there’ll be a few teeth ground and eyebrows raised at the fact that we’ve run a guest column from Andy Tait of Greenpeace.
To make life easier for ourselves, I could say that the environmentalist group, in their usual style, swung down the side of our building and inserted the article in the magazine against our will. However, I cannot tell a lie. We did actually invite Mr Tait to share his views on the situation in the Indonesian timber and forestry trade which has so preoccupied the environmentalists and UK timber sector recently.
But, while we are as concerned about poor forest management as anyone, we haven’t gone wholesale over to the “green side”. My view, which I think is shared widely in the trade, is that we need to talk with the environmentalists, listen to their views, give them the benefit of timber industry knowledge of the situation on the ground, and together work out how best to improve things for the benefit of the environment, the local people and the trade.
Of course, we would rather the environmentalists spoke to the industry before they launched headline-grabbing protests. But “Greenpeace sits down for talks with the Timber Trade Federation” is not exactly media magnet material, so it seems we have to live with the banner waving. It shouldn’t stop us talking afterwards.
At the same time, we mustn’t be afraid to express our own opinions forcibly. Intentionally or otherwise, the impression given by some greens is that, if the timber trade walks away from the rainforests, the local population and their trees will live harmoniously ever after. But if people in often very poor countries don’t have economic incentive to preserve forests through sustainable timber production, they’ll use them for something else to help them subsist, like agriculture, or fuel.
What is needed on Indonesia, says Finnforest UK, is for the UK trade to “highlight the seriousness of the [forest] situation, whilst offering the Indonesians a viable economic reason to progress towards sustainable forestry and certification”. In the next TTJ the company’s environmental officer Rachel Butler will expand on this and respond to Mr Tait. His e-mail address is also below if you want to talk direct.
