Open letter asking moratorium on certification to FSC

We, the undersigned environmental and social justice organizations, call on the FSC to immediately institute a moratorium on the certification and re-certification of industrial timber plantations, until the findings and recommendations of the present “Plantations Review” have been incorporated into the FSC certification system and are being properly implemented.

Industrial timber plantations established as large scale chemical and mechanical intensively managed monocultures, have a wide range of negative environmental and social impacts that have not yet been adequately assessed and comprehensively quantified, and that cannot therefore be meaningfully mitigated against.

The problems caused by industrial timber plantations are often more acute in the south, where trees grow fast and high yielding alien plantations have rotation cycles as short as seven years. These short rotations result in abnormally high depletion of soil nutrients, leading to long term soil impoverishment, together with accelerated top-soil losses.

In South Africa, more than 1 million hectares of industrial timber plantations have been certified by the FSC and timber companies use the FSC label to promote their products as “environmentally friendly”. Yet these plantations have been responsible for major impacts on the scarce local water resource, lowering the groundwater table and drying out countless wetlands, fountains and streams - which severely limit land use options and thereby jeopardize rural people's livelihoods. All industrial timber plantations in South Africa have been established in areas with the highest rainfall and deepest soils, replacing valuable grasslands, and disrupting or displacing the traditional communities that occupied those areas.

Such problems are not confined to the south. In Ireland, the FSC has certified extensive plantations comprising 90% exotic species, mainly Sitka Spruce from North America - with apparent disregard for ecological impacts and nature conservation principles.

The negative impacts associated with timber plantations (and FSC certification thereof) have come increasingly under the spotlight during the past decade. As early as 2001 the FSC position on plantations was listed as an issue which needed clarification. In May, 2002 Tim Synott produced an FSC Plantation Policy Draft, which acknowledged that "Disputes have arisen around plantation certification, and some of the disagreements and confusion has been caused by different interpretations of the FSC Principles and Criteria and other policies." At the FSC general assembly in November, 2002, FSC members passed a motion which stated that "The current version of the FSC Plantation Policy Draft (30 May 2002) is not clear enough and needs improvement." The motion continued to state that FSC should produce a revised plantation policy "after a broad consultation with the membership" to give "concrete guidance on the interpretation of P10 [principle 10]". This was to have taken place within 18 months, i.e. by May 2004. In September 2004 the FSC launched the present plantations review in Bonn.

Please provide full details of the area of Industrial plantations that has been certified since November 2002 when the organization’s membership passed a motion which clearly stated that the FSC policy on plantations needed improvement.

There is growing and justified opposition to the spread of industrial timber plantations world-wide, and we cannot endorse continued FSC certification of industrial timber plantations using the current flawed principles and criteria. Therefore, the FSC board of directors must suspend certification of industrial timber plantations until the review process has been finalized and the broadly approved findings and recommendations incorporated. It is essential that the social and environmental concerns of the non-industry stakeholders are fully addressed in this process. Continuing to certify industrial timber plantations while the Review is in progress undermines the legitimacy of the review and the reputation of the FSC.

Signed:

Lydia Bartz
Urgewald, Germany

Peter Gerhardt
Robin Wood, Germany

Chris Lang
WRM Plantations Campaign, Germany

Philip Owen
Geasphere, South Africa

Godfrey Silaule,
Geasphere, South Africa

Wally Menne
Timberwatch Coalition, South Africa

Ricardo Carrere
World Rainforest Movement, Uruguay