Spain:
FSC’s certificate to NORFOR or the continuation of a fraud
On last April 9, the Galician organization
APDR (Asociación pola defensa da Ría) issued an official statement
regarding the FSC certification of the NORFOR company, a subsidiary
branch of the Spanish pulp and paper company ENCE, which had been
certified in April 2005.
In the statement, APDR denounces that
“In Galicia, we have been suffering for many years the consequences
of the dreadful influence of the company ENCE in our natural environment
and in our economy." APDR refers to
the monoculture and trading of eucalyptus wood for the manufacturing
of pulp which “has caused the impoverishment and abandonment of
rural communities, abandonment of forestry lands”. The communiqué
enumerates other impacts of industrial timber plantations, such
as “high risk of fire”, “intense erosion of lands”, “the loss
of biological diversity and the destruction of resources” and
the pollution of “streams and underground aquifers” by the
use of “large volumes of pesticides”, as well as the “loss of
quality of the landscape of the areas occupied by their activities”.
In spite of all that, the company obtained
the certificate of the FSC through the certifier SGS (Societé
Générale de Surveillance), a Swiss inspection,
verification, testing and certification company which in 1997
had been suspended from certification activities by the FSC for
six months, due to controversy arising over the certification
of a logging operation undertaken by the forestry company Leroy
in the forests of Gabon.
From the beginning APDR denounced the
problem to the FSC delegation in Spain, elaborating a detailed
85-page report (http://www.apdr.info/norfor/norbarpr.htm).
Last year, APDR together with organizations from other seven countries
requested that, “in accordance with the objective of the FSC to
‘promote the environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial
and economically viable of the world’s forests’ the certification
of NORFOR is cancelled forthwith” (see
http://www.wrm.org.uy/actors/FSC/Campaign_De_Certification/Spain.html).
Now, APDR statement
says that the recent report published on February 5, 2007, by
SGS regarding the second assessment audit of the certification
under FSC standards of the forest company NORFOR “was full of
falsehoods, manipulation of the information, misrepresentation
of the facts and concealment of the reality. But now the problem
is not the intention of defrauding which the company has held
from the beginning of the certification process. The problem is
that FSC, fully aware of the fraud, has decided to continue with
this certification in spite of the increasingly crushing evidence
of nonfulfillment of the standards; thus, FSC takes another backward
step by moving further away from the aims with which it was created.”
The communiqué regrets that: “In Galicia,
the worst management system, which favours erosion, the loss of
biodiversity and the disappearance of forest uses and resources,
has the FSC certificate. More than two years after the certificate
was issued, NORFOR´s forest management system has not been modified
and the maintenance of the certificate is based on deceit and
concealment of reality on the part of the certification body,
SGS, and the complicity of FSC, which, almost two years after
APDR lodged a formal complaint by bringing forward clear and easily
contrastable evidence of nonfulfillment of the standards, continues
to strive to maintain the certificate at any price. FSC is demonstrating,
in the certification of NORFOR, that their real primary objective
is to protect a flourishing business rather than ‘guarantee the
authenticity of its certifications’ and ‘promote a forest management
system which is responsible, beneficial to society and financially
viable’”.
APDR warns that the certificate is “a
document which gives enterprises access to important public subsidies
granted by states and international organisms”, it “allows the
enterprise to improve its position in a market where the certification
is granted a value and a prestige which, as the falsified certifications
proliferate, it is losing. It is only the economic value of the
benefits which forestry enterprises obtain from the acquisition
of the certificate which makes the companies seek them and FSC
maintain them at any price, not taking into account the nonfulfillment
of the standards.”
It’s high time people become aware that
“being in possession of the certification does not necessarily
mean that the holder's forest management is responsible, beneficial
to society and financially viable.”
Article based on “Official Statement
of APDR (Asociación Pola Defensa Da Ría) Regarding the FSC Certification
of NORFOR”,
http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Spain/APDR.pdf, April 9, 2007,
sent by APDR, e-mail: apdr@apdr.info,
www.apdr.info
