[Greenbuilding] Forest Stewardship Council: A list of their latest lying certifications!

Mon Oct 16 13:36:07 CDT 2006

Re: [Greenbuilding] ***Forest Stewardship Council: A listHi All!

I got the figure of 80% gone from a paper written by Antonia Juhasz when she was with American Lands. She's one of the best researchers and activists any one will ever meet--she is currently on tour in the Red States with her new book, "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time" When I asked her where she got that figure, she said the WWF, but she could have meant WRI (she was moving from American Lands to the International Forum on Globalization at the time, and couldn't provide me with the document she was referencing).

I have some good info to offer in response to Tim's figures and comments--I have just been utterly swamped, and will probably not get to this till the end of the week or the weekend! Until then, please don't assume any rosy pictures of 50% of primary forest still extant. Papua New Guinea and West Papua have been ravaged by both mining and oil interests--I was a member of the support group (IAWP, I believe it was called) for indigenous resistance to Indonesian and corporate rule in West Papua--for years, and will have to go over those emails to determine the figures they had. Siberia is being trashed. The primary forests in the Congo Republic have recently been targeted for certification and destruction (I have to dig up the PRs on that for the figures)--the ownership was against the law, which has limits on the amount of land that can be owned by a consortium, but the FSC overlooked that formality. And on and on. Also, I want to research Collins Pine (I'd be surprised) and Menomenee (I think forestethics may have had some doubts here, but I will have to verify that).

Why am I taking this tone with you, Tim? BECAUSE I AM SURE YOU CANNOT PROVE THERE IS 50% LEFT, yet you insist there is. And I think you should err on the side of the planet at this critical juncture.

Cheers,

Mary

Mary Bull, Co-director
Greenwood Earth Alliance, Save the Redwoods - Boycott the Gap Campaign
252 Frederick, San Francisco, CA 94117 http://www.gapsucks.org
Chalice Farm and Sustainable Living Center, 748 Montgomery Rd, Sebastopol CA 95472
415-731-7924 - 415-509-1188 chalicenew at earthlink.net

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Tim Keating 
  To: Mary Bull - Greenwood Earth Alliance ; Greenbuilding ; Tim Hermach (Native Forest Council) ; Bug Deacon (Heritage Salvage) ; Mike (Green Frame) 
  Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2006 10:44 AM
  Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] ***Forest Stewardship Council: A list of their latest lying certifications!***

  Mary,

  At 5:41 PM -0700 10/12/06, Mary Bull - Greenwood Earth Alliance wrote:
    Tim, Please tell me which temperate second-growth certifications are sound--I'd really like to know. Certainly not Tembec, not MRC, not J.D. Irving...

  Menomenee Tribal Enterprises seemed to me to be very sound. Collins Pine, some of the early ones. I certainly haven't kept up on certifications in the temperate regions but I do know that, when one is talking about second-growth, it's a lot easier to retain ecological functioning in temperate forests (since the big hit was the initial clearing and diversity is quite low when compared with tropical forests). I think you'd find sound certifications all over. Unfortunately, the standards have been undermined so much that they're mixed in with lots of ones that are not sound.

    The 80% figure concurs with the depletion of the ancient redwood forests--

  Well, sure, the US is racked - but that can't be extrapolated across the world. The Amazon is still about 80% in-tact, Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, large parts of Africa. Siberia is still mostly in-tact as well as much of Canada's boreal. Of course, all these places are under 'the gun' but we can't just say they're gone.

    in fact, they have entered and destroyed or severely damaged almost 98%. With that stat comes the stat that most of this damage was done in the past 30 years, which is true of the redwood forests: circa 1970 is when industrial logging went into high gear. By the way, these two stats are many years old by now--I've been using them for the past six years. And Big Timber hasn't been whistling Dixie in the interim.

    Tim, I really don't think any one knows for sure the exact figure, at this point.

  Well, WRI's study was probably the most rigorous ever done. And FAO puts out their figures every five years.

    The latest study of satellite photos released this past year reportedly show that the Amazon has been logged twice as much at twice the rate than was previously believed (I can dig up these articles if you like).

  I have them all over our website. I quote them all the time. But that doesn't change the 50%-old-growth figure enough to justify saying 20%.

    Where do you get your 50% figure? The UN? I had an exchange with Simon Counsell of Rainforest Foundation, UK, who is at sharp odds with the UN's latest rosy figures,

  As am I, Mary. I've been attacking their figures for years. But it's mostly because they consider deforestation to be the complete clearing of trees. No, I'm getting my figures from WRI, WWF and other major studies. Yes, they're a few years old. But in six years we haven't gone from 50% old growth to 20%.

    and who believes that there are no reliable figures--there need to be (I can send you those exchanges with all the details as to why they are grossly inaccurate).

  I've seen it.

    Environmentalists can figure the damage in their forests--like we have done--and those figures are generally staggering, well beyond the 80% figure--like the 98% of old growth redwood gone.

  But that's only for certain areas.

    Or did you want to contest that, too. Please come to the redwoods and show me those millions of acres of ancient forests--I invite you to.

  Mary, I'm not sure why you seem to want to take disagreement to this level. From where are you deriving your figure of 80% of primary forests gone?

  tim keating

    Mary

    Mary Bull, Co-director
    Greenwood Earth Alliance, Save the Redwoods - Boycott the Gap Campaign
    252 Frederick, San Francisco, CA 94117 http://www.gapsucks.org
    Chalice Farm and Sustainable Living Center, 748 Montgomery Rd, Sebastopol CA 95472
    415-731-7924 - 415-509-1188 chalicenew at earthlink.net

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