{"id":12703,"date":"2020-11-25T10:52:59","date_gmt":"2020-11-25T10:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/?p=12703"},"modified":"2021-12-01T12:41:21","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T12:41:21","slug":"forest-stewardship-council-declares-open-season-on-central-africas-intact-forest-landscapes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/press\/12703\/forest-stewardship-council-declares-open-season-on-central-africas-intact-forest-landscapes\/","title":{"rendered":"FOREST STEWARDSHIP COUNCIL DECLARES OPEN SEASON ON CENTRAL AFRICA’S INTACT FOREST LANDSCAPES"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Position statement on the new FSC National Standards for Cameroon and Republic of Congo <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n
\n
Stand for the Congo Basin Forest<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
\"\"
Logs at the port of Douala, Cameroon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Yaound\u00e9, 23 November 2020 – New Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) \u201cnational standards\u201d for Cameroon<\/a> and the Republic of Congo<\/a> are good news for the  multinational loggers destroying Africa\u2019s Intact Forest Landscapes<\/a> (IFL), biodiversity hotspots crucial for maintaining global carbon levels. [1]<\/p>\n\n

\u201cThe FSC business lobby demonstrates once again that FSC-labeled wood from the Congo Basin is as likely as unlabeled wood to come from forest destruction and the trashing of forest people\u2019s rights — if not more so,\u201d said Ir\u00e8ne Wabiwa Betoko, Greenpeace Africa International Project Leader for the Congo Basin forest.<\/p>\n\n

Bonn-based FSC\u2019s national standards are meant to adapt the label\u2019s global certification standard to local contexts. <\/p>\n\n

Outside \u201ccore\u201d zones of IFLs, the new standards welcome \u201cpriority\u201d roads up to 25 meters wide and allow felling at a higher rate than multinationals presently boast of. Cutting within up to a kilometer of the borders of protected areas is accepted — a rule presented as “the creation of buffer zones.”  <\/p>\n\n

The new standards come six months after the FSC certified a Congolaise industrielle des bois (CIB) concession located in the Cuvette Centrale peatlands straddling the border of the two Congos, a “carbon bomb” estimated to contain the equivalent of nearly 20 years of the fossil fuel emissions of the United States.  <\/p>\n\n

It emerged in January that one of the auditors who validated the FSC label of a French-owned Cameroonian multinational<\/a> last year was working for the loggers’ Paris-based industrial lobby group, of which the firm is a key member.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cFSC’s new Cameroon and Congo standards are a green light to loggers keen on gutting the Intact Forest Landscapes of the region,\u201d said Wabiwa.  <\/p>\n\n

The new standards include a provisional obligation to define at least 50% of each IFL as a core area — well below the 80% FSC \u201ccommitted\u201d to in 2014. [2]  But the FSC explicitly permits green-labeling of industrial logging even within these areas. The most sensitive zones of Africa’s most sensitive forests are open to “very limited” industrial logging as long as multinationals’ profit making “will produce clear, substantial, additional, long-term conservation and social benefits.” [3]  <\/p>\n\n

The standards’ lip service to “culturally appropriate engagement” with Indigenous People serves only to mask the fact that all of the Congo Basin’s 50 million ha of logging concessions were allocated before soliciting — much less receiving — the Free, prior and informed consent of anyone.  FSC’s elaborate “consultation” procedures with Indigenous People greenwash the theft of their ancestral lands.<\/p>\n\n

Following the FSC\u2019s Ikea scandal last summer, exposing the label\u2019s greenwashing of illegal Ukrainian wood, Greenpeace Africa joins Earthsight<\/a> in saying: “Rampant illegal logging. Clearance of vast tracts of precious rainforest. Beatings and murder of local communities. From Brazil to the Congo, from Peru to Russia, you name it and FSC-\u00adcertified firms have stood accused of complicity in it. Long\u00ad-standing structural flaws in FSC systems, including huge conflicts of interest, mean such problems will inevitably continue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

ENDS<\/p>\n\n

\n
Stand for the Congo Basin Forest<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

Notes:<\/h2>\n\n

[1] In 2017 Greenpeace Africa found that between 2000 and 2013 the percentage of IFL loss in FSC-certified concessions in the Congo Basin was twice the percentage of IFL loss in uncertified concessions. https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/planet4-africa-stateless\/2018\/10\/9beda7ae-9beda7ae-greenpeace_ifl_report_final-low-res.pdf?_ga=2.16179190.1976992234.1602834717-727722132.1558513189<\/a><\/p>\n\n

[2] Based on FSC General Assembly Motion 65 in 2014, core areas are defined as a minimum of 80% of the IFL in forest management units, and are \u201cthe portion of each Intact Forest Landscape designated to contain the most important cultural and ecological values.\u201d FSC IFL Guidance For Managers, January 2020, https:\/\/fsc.org\/en\/document-centre\/documents\/resource\/424<\/a><\/p>\n\n

[3] “Management strategies allow limited industrial activity* within core areas* only if all effects of industrial activity* including fragmentation*: <\/p>\n\n

1) Are restricted to a very limited portion of the core area*; <\/p>\n\n

2) Do not reduce the core area* below 50,000 ha, and <\/p>\n\n

3) Will produce clear, substantial, additional, long-term* conservation* and social benefits.”<\/p>\n\n

For more information, please contact: <\/h2>\n\n

Tal Harris: International Communications Coordinator: tharris@greenpeace.org<\/a>, +221-774643195 (WhatsApp)<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n \t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tCongo Basin Forest\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n Get Involved\n <\/a>\n \t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/section>\n\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) \u201cnational standards\u201d for Cameroon and the Republic of Congo are good news for the multinational loggers destroying Africa\u2019s Intact Forest Landscapes (IFL), biodiversity hotspots crucial for maintaining global carbon levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":12704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"not set","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[24,44],"p4-page-type":[14],"class_list":["post-12703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-protecttheenvironment","tag-forests","tag-cameroon","p4-page-type-press"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12703"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49921,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12703\/revisions\/49921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12703"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=12703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}