Initiated by WWF in cooperation with business partners --a group of producers, buyers, retailers and financial institutions-- in 2003, the initiative called Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has hold its third meeting in Singapore this month where 8 Principles and 39 Criteria were adopted.
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As it has been already informed, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has started the Plantations Review process (See WRM Bulletin 92).
Several organizations, WRM among them, that since long time ago have been requesting the FSC to review the certification of plantations, have supported the process with documentation and research on the negative social and environmental impacts of those monoculture large scale tree plantations.
The African Forest Law Enforcement and Governance (AFLEG) process quickly succeeded the Asia process - even though, at the time (and still) actual practical outcomes of the Asia FLEG have remained elusive.
Much is being said about “illegal logging.” In Costa Rica, the present government’s forestry policy has been limited to establishing, with the generous support of FAO, a team to analyze and take action against illegal logging. According to the government this is the forestry sector’s fundamental problem. Based on dubious data, the estimate was that between 25 and 35 per cent of timber consumed comes from illegal sources.
However, from the ecological standpoint, we see the need to “clarify the picture” and identify in the first place the different versions of “illegal logging.”
Peru’s forests are under siege. Throughout the Peruvian Amazon, illegal and destructive ‘legal’ loggers are engaged in large-scale and destructive extraction of remaining high value caoba: “mahogany” (Swietenia macrophylla) and cedro: “tropical cedar” (Cedrela odorata). Recent estimates suggest that as much as 90% of timber extracted in the Peruvian Amazon is illegal. Official figures report that most Peruvian hardwood timber is exported to Mexico, the USA, Canada and Belgium. Much of this timber is imported in violation of international environmental agreements (like CITES).
Asia Pulp & Paper(APP), one of the world’s largest paper and pulp producer, was accused by Greenpeace for conducting illegal logging of forests in southwestern China’s Yunnan province, the most biologically diverse area in China.
According to the most recent official estimates (Forest Survey of India, 2003 State of Forests Report), India continues to lose its forest cover. The 2003 estimates record a net minus change of nearly three million hectares of ‘dense forests’, which means serious and continued deforestation in forests with canopy density of 40 percent and above.
Many European NGOs believe that government procurement has a great potential to contribute to responsible forest management globally. According to WWF figures, governmental purchase of timber and timber products is estimated to account for 18 percent of total timber imports into G8 countries. Worth $20 billion annually, this constitutes a formidable economic force in the international timber market.
Thousands of indigenous peoples are displaced from their land, which is militarized and expropriated in an unending genocide. Oil exploitation is carried out – causing damages that go uncompensated – without consulting the communities and with the connivance of the government of the time. Transnational companies such as Shell, Repsol, and Maxus appropriate territorial spaces under the pretext that they are of “public utility”, they contaminate bodies of water and river beds, they deforest virgin forests and generate impacts destroying the future.
In 1999, the World Bank's Economics of Industrial Pollution Control research team published a report titled "Greening Industry". The report, which was the result of "six years of research, policy experiments, and firsthand observation", described Asia Pulp and Paper's PT Indah Kiat Pulp and Paper as a "success story".
The herbicide glyphosate was identified in 1974 by John Franz, a scientist working for US-based agro-industrial multinational Monsanto. Today Monsanto boasts that its glyphosate products, which include the herbicide Roundup, are "among the world's most widely used herbicides".
Glyphosate works by interfering with the metabolism of the plant and a few days after spraying, plants wilt, turn yellow and die. Glyphosate herbicides also contain chemicals which make the herbicide to stick to leaves so that the glyphosate can move from the surface of the plant into the plant's cells.