Colombia:
Is the FSC Seal Applied to Blood-Stained Timber?
Between 2001 and
2005, plywood panels manufactured by Pizano S.A., one of
the largest timber companies in Colombia, could be purchased in
the U.S. The panel was manufactured in part using timber from
one of the plantations certified by Forest Stewardship Council
(FSC), and in part from the natural forests in northeast Colombia,
forests in which guerrilla organizations, paramilitary groups
and the army fight for control of the territory and its natural
resources. Consequently, these plywood panels were stained with
blood.
How is it possible
that the FSC permitted itself to be tainted with blood? The Pizano
S.A. group is a major shareholder in Maderas del Darién,
S.A., a timber company which heavily exploits forests in the
watersheds of the Río Atrato tributaries in the Department of
Chocó, which crosses the Colombian Pacific Reserve, a region noted
for its high level of biodiversity. Forty percent of the timber
supplies with which Pizano S.A. manufactures its plywood
panel comes from these forests of such high ecological value.
Moreover, illegal and destructive exploitation has significantly
reduced the natural areas of “cativo” (Priora copaifera, sometimes
referred to as Spanish walnut), a threatened species used
to manufacture the plywood.
This company has
worked at the same time and in the same space in which armed conflicts
and military operations have taken place, causing the displacement
of thousands of people beginning in 1997. Human rights violations,
including murder, have been frequent and remain unpunished. Illegal
logging is a serious problem and ownership of the land is the
object of disputes frequently settled in court. With all of these
ingredients, logging and the armed conflict have caused destruction
to communities of African descent, deforesting their lands or
turning them into oil palm plantations.
In 2000, during a
preliminary evaluation of Pizano S.A., Smartwood met with
Iniciativa Nacional de Colombia, and members of its executive
board questioned the possible certification of this company. At
that time, Pizano S.A., was already implicated in the conflict
in the Department of Chocó. In the follow-up evaluation of 2005,
the inter-ecclesial Justicia y Paz Colombia, an organization
committed to defending human rights throughout Latin America,
filed a formal complaint in which it stated that Maderas del
Darién was responsible for human rights violations and environmental
destruction in Darién, citing various documents and court rulings.
The complaint filed
by Justicia y Paz Colombia was supported by numerous social
and environmental organizations in Colombia and Spain (Greenpeace
Spain and Ecologistas en Acción, among others). Later in
2005, these organizations asked Smartwood not to renew FSC certification
for Pizano S.A. In addition, we informed FSC Executive
Director Heiko Liedeker of these facts.
The links of Pizano
S.A.’s subsidiary to the conflict have been made public in recent
months. In May 2007, several news media outlets in Colombia published
the accounts of former members of paramilitary groups who acknowledged
that they had received financial support from Maderas del
Darién. Smartwood was immediately informed of these
facts.
However, all of this
was not enough. On 17 July 2007, Smartwood informed the complaining
organizations of its intentions to grant the FSC seal to the plantations
of Pizano S.A. again. According to Smartwood, there is
no evidence that the reported activities “have been carried out
in the present or recent past.” This statement makes it clear
that neither Smartwood nor the company deny that these activities
did occur in the “non-recent” past,” such as in 2005, when the
company also had the FSC seal and Smartwood turned a deaf ear
to the complaints of civil society.
According to Smartwood,
Pizano S.A. has now pledged to adopt the FSC controlled
wood standard under which timber of illegal origin, timber from
forests of high conservation value or timber exploited in violation
of traditional and civil rights, is unacceptable.
Smartwood’s failure
to keep illegal and destructive wood out of the FSC supply chain
in Colombia is another hard blow to the credibility and prestige
of the FSC. To date, no Smartwood auditor has visited the Darién
region and there is still no established mechanism, registry or
system to ensure that timber resulting from the destruction of
forests of high ecological value, illegal logging or violence,
is not mixed with timber from the certified plantations of Pizano
S.A. to manufacture the plywood panels – plywood panels on
which the FSC label may be stained with blood. Furthermore, FSC
International has failed to give clear guidance on the exclusion
of highly controversial companies such as Pizano, from the FSC
system.
By Miguel Ángel Soto,
Greenpeace Spain, e-mail:
masoto@es.greenpeace.org, and Tom
Kucharz, Ecologistas en Acción, e-mail:
agroecologia@ecologistasenaccion.org
