Environmental pressure groups have restated their disputed claim that the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is the only effective timber certification scheme, following publication of a report critical of competing schemes.
The report, published on May 21 by international forest campaign group Fern, claims to have uncovered serious failings of Pan European Forest Certification (PEFC), the Canadian Standards Association and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. And it says the FSC is the only independent and credible scheme.
It finds that all three certified logging on disputed lands and did not recognise the rights of indigenous people. The PEFC scheme was said to employ varying national standards, certify logging in European old-growth forests, and have no clear rules of certification procedures.
In a joint statement issued with the report, more than 25 environmental and social NGOs endorsed the FSC as the only credible certification scheme.
PEFC has fiercely rebutted the ‘unfounded’ claims of the report, suggesting Fern is stuck in a time warp.
PEFC UK chairman Len Yull said national standards were used because PEFC did not believe in imposing standards from outside a country, and that old-growth forest had been logged sustainably in Finland and Sweden for the past 500 years.
‘Our forests are not accepted if they don’t meet all the established principles of Kyoto, Helsinki and the like. They are all sustainably managed but this doesn’t mean they can’t be logged. Contrary to what Fern would like to believe, you can’t freeze frame nature,’ he added.
