Examination of Witnesses (Questions 165-179)
MS SASKIA
OZINGA, MR
NATHAN ARGENT,
MR JOHN
SAUVEN, MS
BEATRIX RICHARDS
AND MR
ANDREW LEE
1 NOVEMBER 2005
Q165 Chairman: May we welcome you to
our Committee this afternoon. I would like to begin by inviting
each of the organisations, Greenpeace, FERN and WWF, to give us
an initial introduction just to set out how important this issue
of illegal logging is and why it is so important in respect of
the world's forest, just so that we can get a broader and bigger
picture of the context within which this inquiry is taking place.
Mr Lee: Thank you very much, Chairman.
I would like to lead off, if I may, on behalf of the group—I
am Andrew Lee from WWF—but we have discussed some key points
before your hearing today. I just wanted to make four points by
way of introduction to the case, if you like, that will be illustrated
by a lot of the evidence amongst the group here. The first point
is just to go back to the basic fact that forests are disappearing
globally at a colossal rate. If we are looking at tropical forest,
we are losing forest still at the rate of 45 football pitches
per minute. If you looked in terms of the area of the UK you would
be clearing the area of the UK every two years. So the scale of
the problem is still immense, and the need to tackle it—the
urgency. In biodiversity terms, in Borneo three species are being
discovered every month, far more if you look in detail at invertebrates;
80%t of orang-utan habitat has disappeared in the last ten years;
if you look in the Congo Basin, Western Lowland Gorillas decimated
in some places, reduced by 90% in fact by the introduction of
the Ebola virus driven by forest clearance. This is not just a
problem in terms of biodiversity, it is also, of course, a colossal
issue in terms of climate change, both in undermining and destroying
the capacity of the great forest systems of the world to regulate
the climate but also in terms of the emissions created through,
particularly, illegal logging. So forests are disappearing, point
one. Point two, the supply chain itself is now threatened. If
you look in the future, currently the EU, we estimate, is sourcing
3 billion euros worth of timber going into the hands of criminals,
and if you extend current trends into the future for certain tropical
timbers the limiting factor within ten years will be resource
depletion—there will be no resource available. So in pure
supply chain terms this is a colossal issue. Of course, a lot
of this timber is going for uses which are the ultimate in wasting
a natural resource; for instance, paper pulp. In terms of what
needs to be done there are two points we want to make there. The
first is in terms of the FLEGT action plan (the Forest Law, Governance
and Trade) at EU level, and the core of that is the licensing
regulation. From the point of view of the NGOs here what we have
seen is a very strong and robust action plan originally, in 2003,
turned into what is an extremely weak and very disappointing licensing
regulation. In fact, the current draft is so weak we think it
is effectively meaningless and will fail to deliver any significant
impact on illegal trade, and it would need separate legislation
as well as a huge tightening up of that existing regulation to
control the import of illegal timber and forest products into
the EU. Currently, we see the UK, in the Presidency of the EU,
presiding over this very, very weak legislation. The final point
is on CEPT (Central Point of Expertise on Timber) in the UK. We
think this is a good initiative, the Government has been in a
leadership role in Europe and globally in going for this. However,
the way it is actually being interpreted and put into practice
is a grave cause for concern because the criteria, which themselves
are quite robust, which allow you to decide which forest certification
schemes are effective in delivering sustainable forest management,
are not being interpreted correctly, we believe, and are actually
failing to give the right weighting. So, in fact, they are giving
credence to certification schemes that do not deserve that credence,
and this undermines the legitimacy of things like the Forest Stewardship
Council (the FSC) scheme. So CPET is good but needs a huge amount
of work to make it effective in terms of how it is used and to
actually translate it into procurement policies across national
government departments and then also, of course, to reach out
into local government, for example, in terms of procurement. So
forests are disappearing, the supply chain is under threat, the
European proposals are extremely weak and very disappointing;
CPET has potential but needs a lot of work to make it more robust.
Q166 Chairman: Thank you for that.
We will be coming on to some of the detailed aspects of that,
but just before we do I would be very interested in your views
as to why there is not a political will to really deal with this
issue, given that you yourself have mentioned climate change?
It just strikes me, with the huge problem and challenge you have
presented to us, why you feel there is not really the political
will to deal with this. It is your efforts that are endeavouring
to bring about a change but that does not seem to be matched internationally
and across the European level.
Mr Sauven: Just in response to
that, we got a letter from Margaret Beckett last week on this
issue about the process going through the EU at the moment. In
the letter she said that she herself was extremely frustrated
by the slow progress that was being made, and I think this is
one of the issues that this has been going round and round in
circles through the Commission, through the Member countries,
back through the Commission and Parliament, and so on and so forth,
and not only is there very little progress being made but it also
seems to get weaker as time goes on. I think this is one of the
reasons why we have been trying to pressure the UK Government
to maybe act more unilaterally if it is not going to get action
at an EU level.
Q167 Chairman: Just zooming in, if
you like, on the individual aspects of all this and the issue
of certification, which you did refer to, we would like your views
about the different certification schemes that there are at the
moment and that have come into existence over the last five years.
There is more than one of them. Is that beneficial? Is everyone
trying to jump onto the FSC bandwagon? Do you feel that the standards
that FSC has are high enough, or too high, and how does that relate
to developing countries? Do you believe that because the FSC apparently
seems to have a high standard that is one of the reasons why there
is such a plethora of other ones, because of their relationship
to developing countries?
Ms Ozinga: The first thing to
say is, of course, the FSC was the first one and it was established
by a multi-stakeholder process with the timber industry, with
environment NGOs and social groups all sitting together to design
and implement the programme. Subsequently, many other schemes
(there are, in total, eight or nine, depending on how you count
them) have come into operation, but almost all of those fall under
the umbrella of the PEFC at some stage, or at least are trying
to get under the umbrella of the PEFC. So, in effect, you have
the programme for the endorsement of forest certification schemes
as one and then the FSC is another, which narrows it down to only
two operational systems, if you like, in the long term. All of
us certainly do not think that the FSC sets its standard very
highly; in fact, I think you can say that if we wanted to, almost
the whole of Europe and a large part of the rest of the Northern
Hemisphere, could be potentially FSC-certified over the long term.
There is also some criticism of FSC which also shows that, clearly,
the standards have not been set too high. When you talk about
tropical countries, yes, there definitely is a problem. but it
has always been put to you, probably, and also to us, that the
FSC is undermining development in the tropics because it cannot
certify practices in the tropics. However, if you look at the
timber trade as a total, there is only 10% of tropical timber
coming into the market, and the percentage of certified forest
in the tropics is not that much less. So it is very easy to distort
statistics here by saying you cannot get a timber certified from
the tropics; you have to see it in the context that the timber
trade from those countries is much lower than it is in the Northern
Hemisphere. Maybe I should leave it at that and give the floor
to Beatrix to go a bit more into detail.
Ms Richards: I was going to give
some practical examples about what it would mean if you, for example,
were a forest owner and the FSC were to come to your door. The
process you go through (this is some of the research we have done)
to get FSC certified is that a man comes to your door, he has
a big clipboard, he has a whole list of common criteria which
you will be checked off against. He will go out into the forest,
he will look at how you are managing the forest on the ground,
he will talk to all the stakeholders—ie, all the neighbouring
landowners and people that have an interest in that forest—he
will look at the operations on the ground to assess your health
and safety, look at whether the guy in the harvesting cab is wearing
a protective helmet, and all this kind of thing, and then he will
come back every year and make sure that the management practices
that you had in place are still operating; that you are still
complying with that scheme. That is the way the FSC operates.
Also, the way the standards are put together is done in a consensus
process between environment and social and economic stakeholder
groups, and they all have an equal weighting in that decision-making
process. With PEFC, if you are in Austria, for example, you get
a letter in the post, and it says: "Would you like to be
PEFC certified or would you not like to be PEFC certified?"
You tick a box, you send it back and that is, basically, all that
happens. That has actually happened to WWF; we own some forests
in Austria and we received this letter in the post. We ticked
the box that we did not want to be PEFC certified. This happens
in France, in Germany and it varies between the countries; there
is no common consistency in the schemes across the countries in
which it applies. If it is SFI you can define your own criteria,
so you decide how you actually want to be assessed and on what
elements you are going to be assessed, and then also you do not
actually have to have any system in place to check where your
timber is coming from, where it ends up or anything like that,
so it has no effective or mandatory chain of custody.
Q168 Chairman: What would be the
absolute minimum standard that you think should be there for any
system of certification that is looking for sustainability that
actually guarantees it?
Ms Richards: It is FSC. The four
core values we have are absolutely critical to the process, if
I can just find them: meaningful and equitable participation of
all major stakeholder groups in governance and standard setting;
reliable and independent assessment of forest management (chain
of custody); certification decisions are free of conflict of interest
or parties with vested interest (that would be your decision-making
process that you would have just industry members there and they
would dominate that decision-making process; you would not have
other stakeholders, like environment or social groups) and also
transparency in decision making and reporting. One of the things
we have gone through is we looked at corrective action requests,
which are things that FSC puts in place to make sure you comply
with their criteria, and you can actually check for every scheme
how they put those things in place, whereas for PEFC or for other
schemes, this is not transparent; you cannot find anything on
the web, you cannot 'phone anybody up and ask about it.
Q169 Chairman: When we had Timbermet
to give evidence in our inquiry last week—I am not sure
whether or not you have had a chance to see the evidence we received—we
were told by Simon Fineman that much as they would like to see
all timber purchases being certified, basically they told us that
for the next 10 years we would be living in cloud cuckoo land
(he did not use those words, those are my words); it would take
at least 10 years before anything like FSC standard could be achieved.
What is the solution? It is a question of do we do nothing now
or do we wait ten years? What do we do about this problem that
there is without getting so many different countries to sign up
to this?
Mr Lee: I think one or two people might
want to come in. This is clearly an issue about how you close
the gap between where we are now and where we need to be in the
future. I think from our point of view there needs to be a package
of measures, including the controlling of illegal logging, which
is absolutely vital, but also the proper implementation of certification
schemes. Demand management is another issue: demand for some products,
eg virgin pulp for paper, cannot continue to spiral at the level
it is doing now and be met sustainably. All of these different
measures need to come into play over time. It is simply not an
option. I think we cannot say that we have an option to continue
with illegal timber trade because of the impact on the forest
but, also, the devastating impact on the countries where this
illegal trade is happening in terms of livelihoods destroyed,
legitimate income streams subverted and money going into the hands
of criminals. So we do need to look in the long term at how to
get from where we are now and where we need to be through a combination
of different measures, not just one measure. Certification is
only one tool.
Ms Ozinga: Can I add one thing
to that, which is the reduction of consumption, which is an issue
that has not been talked about enough. If I am not mistaken, the
Scottish procurement policy actually does look at the reduction
of paper consumption. When we talk about reduction of consumption
we do not mean the reduction of consumption of timber as such
but we do mean the reduction of paper and pulp, because that is
where the increase in growth is and we really should not see any
more increase in growth in that area. That is the very first step
that needs to be addressed, and then you need to look further
at how you can close that gap, in looking at matters which Andrew
just mentioned.
Q170 Chairman: When I hear you making
these points to us there is a real sense of urgency and a real
passion about what needs to be done. I have to say that that did
not come over to us in the evidence we took from the FSC last
week. How is this issue going to be taken further forward?
Ms Ozinga: I do not think that
is an issue which the FSC can take forward because the FSC is
an independent system which does nothing but, if you want to say
it in that way, accredit certifiers who then assess forest management
systems. It is, if you like, almost a technical body which assesses
forest management. It is up to us, to you and to governments to
really take the action forward. I fully agree with you there is
an enormous urgency there, but I am a little bit more positive
than you are because I have been doing this for more than 20 years
now and if you look back five or six years ago forests were not
at all on the political agenda any more—like it was in the
1990s—now, at least, it is back on the political agenda
to some extent. So at least this whole debate is starting up again
and, hopefully, going more forward in the future. However, there
is a massive urgency and there are an enormous number of tasks
for governments and for us, environment and social NGOs, and for
the industry to do.
Mr Sauven: I think there needs
to be some more joined-up thinking as well, because, for example,
today the Government is discussing climate change with all the
G7 and G8 leaders and with China and India, and so on, and I think
there is a big issue here that the rainforests that are being
set alight in the Amazon and other countries is contributing unknown
quantities—somewhere between 15 and 25 % of CO2 emissions
are coming from burning the rainforests. All the measures and
all the savings that we are trying to make on CO2, which is extremely
difficult and which is going up in flames in these forests, is
absurd because the first thing you should stop doing is actually
setting fire to all these forests. We are not only wrecking the
climate but, also, wiping out biodiversity and so affecting forest-dwelling
people. That is the first measure. This needs to be looked at
more holistically, because if you are going to deal with the issue
of climate change you have got to deal with the issue of what
is going on in the forest. The other thing is that I think if
there is to be any chance of there being any sustainable trade
you have got to stamp out the illegal trade. It is a bit like
saying, for example, with the car industry, that there are stolen
car dealers and legitimate car dealers. How can a legitimate car
industry operate alongside a stolen car industry? It cannot; it
will always be undercut. The fact of the matter is, as of right
now, for example, as we showed recently in our report on ply coming
in from China (I do not blame China—we are the people who
are consuming it) they are undermining legitimate trades. So when
we said to Indonesia "Go FSC" some companies went FSC
and their timber remains unsold in timber yards around the UK
because it is being undercut by Chinese plywood. We said the same
to Brazil in the Amazon rainforest—"Get FSC certification"—and
their products remain unsold in timber yards around the country
because it is being undercut by Chinese plywood. That is all laundering
illegal timber from the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, from
the rainforests of Africa. You cannot have a legal and sustainable
trade going on alongside an illegal and criminal trade. The Government
understands that, everybody understands that—even the timber
trade understands it. If you go into a timber yard they will tell
you: "We have got FSC but Chinese ply is cheaper, so why
don't you buy Chinese ply?" If they are allowed to get away
with it they will get away with it, and that is what we have to
stamp out.
Q171 Chairman: Finally, in respect
of certification, going back to trying to get a minimum standard
in respect of what is needed, putting aside what you said about
there needs to be political leadership to deal with that, where
would you see the leadership coming from across the different
certification schemes that there are, so that we end up with a
higher standard rather than a lower one?
Ms Richards: I was going to add
that I think the issue is not so much that the certification schemes
need to take the initiative but the industry and the people that
are buying and the Government have to take the initiative to drive
this process forward. The key thing in this is not to be overwhelmed
by the sheer scale of what we face because there are ways of being
able to work through it. WWF, through its global forest and trade
network, adopts very much a step-wise approach and, depending
on which country they are dealing with and the structures that
they already have in place in that country, it starts at a low
level, it starts at a medium level, it could start at a higher
level. So the step-wise approach would go from known sources,
go to legality, go to being able to verify where their timber
is coming from and being able to go through the chain of custody
until, eventually, they get up to being able to apply a certification
scheme to the timber that they are selling. So that is a key thing.
Also, in terms of the supply gap and the issues on actually making
sure that the industry is sustainable, we are going to have to
do that and we are going to have to look at things like product
innovation, greater efficiency and reduction in demand in order
to be able to meet that. These are all things that can be done,
and are already being put in place in some situations.
Ms Ozinga: Just to add to that,
the certification schemes are nothing but tools; it is up to government,
listening to all the stakeholders, to set the standards. To some
extent, that is exactly what the CPET process has done. The CPET
process has developed criteria for what they would consider to
be credible certification schemes. I think most stakeholder groups
would agree with me that the process of developing those criteria
has been quite good because they are supported widely across the
board. Where we think the process has failed is actually in assessing
the certification schemes on the basis of those criteria. So certification
schemes themselves are just tools, they are not initiators in
any way.
Q172 Colin Challen: That leads me
on to the next question, really, which is telling us a bit more
about the approach that Pro-forest used and why you are unhappy
about it.
Ms Ozinga: Pro-forest assessed
all four certification schemes (not all of them but those four
schemes) on the basis of those criteria which were developed by
the CPET process (we did the same) and they looked at 26 points.
With the PEFC we disagreed on 13 of those assessments and with
the SFI we agreed on 18 of the 26 points, so there is a big gap
in how Pro-forest believes they should assess the schemes and
how we believe we should assess the schemes. We can send you the
document with the assessments so you can look in detail, or I
can mention a few points. We put that to Defra and we put that
to Pro-Forest and, to some extent, they agreed with our concerns,
and that is the reason that they have only given the PEFC a six-month
probation period, and for the SFI they have only allowed SFI timber
which has a chain of custody, which at the moment is almost non-existent.
Our demand towards the Government and towards CPET is to develop
a much more rigorous system to assess these schemes, which really
looks properly at the criteria and which schemes meet the criteria.
Also, as a slightly separate point, we believe that probably some
of the schemes, if you assess them on paper, show different results
from when you look at them in relation to what is happening in
the field. A big gap, if you like, in the CPET scheme is that
it only looks at a paper assessment and does not actually look
at what is happening in the field. At some point you would have
to include in the CPET process a review to see if what is happening
in the field is matching what is being set on paper.
Q173 Colin Challen: Can you illustrate
that point with a particular point out of the 26?
Ms Ozinga: Maybe an interesting
one is the CSA. I think most of us would agree that if you look
at the paper assessment, the CSA, which is the Canadian scheme,
does meet a lot of these criteria. However, we do know that there
are 13 complaints put forward by environment NGOs and by indigenous
groups in Canada about almost all the CSA certifications, while
the Pro-Forest assessment says that there has been proper consultation,
that environment groups and social groups agree with the certifications,
that indigenous rights have been taken, more or less, properly
into account—all these things are on paper done but if that
has been done on paper how can it happen that almost all the CSA
certifications have been challenged by NGOs? There has to be something
not quite right there.
Ms Richards: We also have two
documents, which we can give you, which set out exactly, just
on the reassessment criteria, what was done. There was obviously
an initial assessment carried out and then they reassessed on
the basis of PEFC and SFI having made some changes to their schemes,
and we have actually got the documents here.
Q174 Colin Challen: Looking at the
PEFC, what happens at the end of the probation period? How is
it reassessed? Will these criteria, and so on, be thoroughly looked
at again? How will that be sorted out?
Ms Ozinga: We do not know how
it will be sorted out. We put forward that we would want it to
be sorted out and that we would like to have a review within six
months. We hope that it will be reviewed in six months, and that
the evidence which we put forward will be taken into account then.
Maybe just one point on the PEFC, just to highlight the problems
of interpretation of the CPET criteria: one of the CPET criteria
is that the standard-setting process—ie, the process which
defines which timber is allowed to get the label of sustainable
(which it is not) should be done with the balanced participation
of different stakeholder groups. That is what the CPET criteria
say. The PEFC scheme allows only the forestry industry or only
the forestry owners to actually set the standard without any environment
or social NGOs involved. They still pass that criteria, which
we think is old—it should not pass that criteria. The reasoning
of Pro-Forest is that the PEFC does say that the standard-setting
should be done by consensus and, therefore, they pass the criteria.
We think that consensus of one stakeholder group is something
very different to consensus across mandatory different stakeholder
groups. That is how you can end up with these criteria very differently.
Q175 Colin Challen: Moving on to
PEFC, they describe themselves in their memo to us as being independent.
Would you agree with that?
Ms Ozinga: I would not agree with
that, no.
Q176 Colin Challen: I have looked
at the evidence so far and I am just wondering whether or not
you might say they were, perhaps, a "greenwash" organisation.
Do not comment if you do not wish to.
Mr Argent: I think there is some
concern that PEFC is an industry-led, systems-based scheme rather
than performance based. In terms of "greenwash", if
you take one clear case study where you have PEFC endorsing the
Finnish certification scheme (the FFCS), where there are a number
of concerns (which I think underlines all the concerns that we
have about the other schemes which have been incorporated into
the CPET assessment) that they are certifying areas where there
is social conflict and human rights abuses taking place for indigenous
people; they are certifying areas where there is logging of old-growth
forest that is having a detrimental impact on internationally
recognised endangered species. So I think that the absence of
social criteria in the assessment and the fact that these other
schemes are getting the green light—are getting endorsement
from the government—means that the government is sending
out a clear message to procurement offices that these schemes
are acceptable. We have problems with this because, essentially,
for PEFC and other schemes are certifying the extinction of endangered
species and, also, on-going forest destruction, I think that is
where the problem lies. We are concerned that these schemes are
"greenwashing" logging practices which are detrimental
to the environment.
Q177 Colin Challen: Would it be your
view that that has happened; the creation of PEFC as a response
to environmental criticisms from NGOs, perhaps, has muddied the
waters and makes it more difficult for end-users, perhaps, looking
at different logos, to figure out what is right and what is wrong?
Ms Richards: In terms of the way
it was set up, I think there were two concerns by the industry
that they were losing control over what they considered to be
their territory, and that the FSC was being quite successful in
terms of bringing all stakeholders together. I think it was also
a cultural thing, that small forest owners in a lot of the Scandinavian
countries, which have a lot of investment potential to do these
kinds of things, felt that they had been short-changed by FSC
because, in the beginning, when FSC was set up it was largely
catering for large-scale certification. It has, since then, set
in place a number of processes which allow small forest owners
also to be able to participate, but in the beginning that was
one of the reasons it was set up. Going back to the issue about
PEFC, and this is also the case for SFI as well, you can carry
a label on a timber product from forest that has been converted,
so the forest conversion issue is a big thing, because you can
have your forest cover and it would be converted to housing and
the timber that actually comes out of that forest can still carry
a PEFC or SFI label, and with FSC that is not possible because
it is not allowed to convert forest.
Ms Ozinga: If I can add one thing,
Beatrix before sketched what happens if you are a forest owner
and you want your forest to be certified under the FSC scheme.
That is across the board. That will happen when you are a forest
owner and you want your forest to be FSC certified. The problem
with the PEFC is that very different things happen, depending
where in the world you are, and that makes the PEFC a really internal-contradictory
scheme, almost. If you say: "Is the PEFC a greenwash?"
my answer would be: "In some countries, yes; in other countries,
no." That is an intrinsic problem for a scheme which has
one label and one logo.
Q178 Colin Challen: Just a couple
of questions to Greenpeace. You published a report critical of
the Malaysian scheme, the MTCC. How far away are they from being
able to prove to your satisfaction that proof of legality or sustainability
for their timber is about to be assured?
Mr Argent: I think issues still
remain with MTCC. In terms of the work we have done in identifying
the problems with MTCC, it is clear that there is a link missing
in the chain of custody—the chain of custody being from
when the tree is felled to where it ends up on the consumer shelf.
There is no link between when the timber is felled to the point
when it is processed. It is only from that point onwards it receives
the certification. Also, proof of legality as well as sustainability
is a problem. There is a region in, Sarawak, I believe it is,
where the MTCC has certified an area where there is still a conflict
taking place, where logging is taking place illegally, and it
is against the indigenous people who have land ownerships of this
area. So it is already a clear case of breach of legality but
it is also of sustainability as well. I think because the MTCC
also certifies on a state by state case, for example for the Malaysian
Peninsula as well, then it is very difficult to see how that can
actually approach identify and assess the sustainability in a
particular forest concession. I know that the MTCC has gone away
and given the government's assessment and conclusions to this
point now, but how far away it is difficult to say, but as it
stands at the moment they are a long way off from legality and
sustainability as far as we are concerned.
Q179 Colin Challen: Moving to Finland,
there are issues which you have raised and concerns about the
PEFC's approval of the Finnish national certification scheme.
What are the issues surrounding that?
Mr Argent: Sorry?
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