40 Brazilian companies from industries such as furniture, packaging, printing, and flooring have signed on to the Brazilian Buyers’ Group of Certified Timber. The group will purchase wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), according to Friends of the Earth, the non-profit responsible for organizing the group.
Its goal is to slow illegal logging, which now accounts for 80 percent of deforestation in Brazil, by not buying this wood.
In Europe, competition is heating up between the environmental non-profit-backed FSC and timber industry-backed Pan-European Forest Certification (PEFC) agency. Nine million hectares (34,740 square miles) are FSC certified in Sweden. PEFC is about to certify its first three national programs in Finland, Norway and Sweden, in what could amount to 25-30 million hectares (96,500 to 115,800 square miles) by year end.
EU NGOs questions whether PEFC certification provides meaningful improvement in forest management. “They are trying to give the image of a credible label of sustainable forestry, but are really just labeling the status quo,” says Ellen von Zitzewitz of the World Wide Fund for Nature. She notes that adequate certification cannot occur at the speed at which at which PEFC certification is progressing. PEFC wants to certify 25 million hectares in Finland alone by the close of 2000, whereas FSC has certified 20 million hectares worldwide over the past four years.
FSC: [sorry this link is no longer available]
PEFC: http://www.pefc.org
Loading...