{"id":7226,"date":"2017-05-05T13:09:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-05T13:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.p4.greenpeace.org\/post\/saving-dvinsky-forest-if-companies-dont-act-customers-will\/"},"modified":"2019-11-06T09:49:02","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T08:49:02","slug":"saving-dvinsky-forest-if-companies-dont-act-customers-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/story\/7226\/saving-dvinsky-forest-if-companies-dont-act-customers-will\/","title":{"rendered":"Saving Dvinsky Forest: If companies don’t act, customers will"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaking truth to corporations has been the backbone of Greenpeace\u2019s global forest campaign for over two decades. Putting pressure on companies buying products from forest destruction has successfully helped protect the Great Bear Rainforest<\/a> in Canada, create moratoria on deforestation due to soya and\u00a0cattle<\/a>\u00a0expansion in the Brazilian Amazon, and deliver multiple\u00a0zero deforestation<\/a> policies inside and outside Indonesia \u2014\u00a0as well as a myriad of other protections, regulations and steps towards safeguarding the world\u2019s forests from further destruction and senseless greed.<\/p>\n

\"Beauty

The narrow belt of old-growth forest along the stream – the so called \u201cwater protection zone\u201d according to Russian national legislation is left untouched inside the clearcut area.<\/p><\/div>\n

With the\u00a0launch<\/a> of Greenpeace\u2019s Great Northern Forest campaign late last year, it should have come as no surprise to companies buying products from the destruction of this vast boreal forest ecosystem that our campaigners would soon be knocking on their doors calling for urgent action.<\/p>\n

In early March, the campaign launched a major investigative report into the destruction of the last remaining Intact Forest Landscapes (IFLs) in the Arkhangelsk region of northwest Russia. It named many of the customers of the logging companies and mills involved in this destruction \u2013 which all have certification<\/a> from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).<\/p>\n

\"Beauty

Old-growth spruce-dominated forest with abundance of dead wood, within an intact forest landscape.<\/p><\/div>\n

A month after the launch of our\u00a0Eye on the Taiga\u00a0<\/a> report, the Russian division of the FSC posted a response to the report on its website. Whilst FSC Russia doesn\u2019t explicitly agree with our conclusion that there needs to a complete phase out of the logging of IFLs in Arkhangelsk, the organisation at least appears to recognise that there needs to be a shift away from the business-as-usual \u2018timber mining\u2019 of these valuable primary forests as highlighted in the report. (Once logging companies have extracted the harvestable wood from one area, they simply move their operations to a new area, with no regard for the long-term management of the forest).<\/p>\n

In its conclusions, FSC Russia agreed that bringing about a logging industry transformation in Arkhangelsk, while helping to establish the Dvinsky Forest Reserve, customers of FSC-certified companies in the region could be putting pressure on these companies to help bring about these much-needed changes.<\/p>\n

\"Russia

Russia Designated protection area in the Dvinsky forest, Arkhangelsk region, Russia. The Dvinsky forest is one of the last intact forest landscapes in the European part of Russia.<\/p><\/div>\n

Even before the launch of the report, Greenpeace campaigners across Europe have been engaging with companies named in the report to request that they take immediate action. To date, the responses have been mixed\u00a0\u2014\u00a0from stone cold silence (eg Arctic Paper) or \u2018we have a policy to source paper that is produced sustainably\u2019 type response (eg Smurfit Kappa) to ones where companies (eg Nestl\u00e9,<\/em> Stora Enso, SCA) are actively engaged and starting to put pressure on their suppliers, exactly as proposed by FSC Russia. Some are arranging field visits to help them come up with an appropriate action plan.<\/p>\n

However, further customer pressure is urgently needed on Pomor Timber, Titan and Arkhangelsk Pulp & Paper (APPM), particularly concerning the creation of the Dvinsky Forest Reserve. Greenpeace now understands that for the reserve to be formally established by the end of 2017 \u2013 the \u2018Year of Natural Protected Areas and Year of Ecology\u2019 in Russia \u2013 these companies need to give their formal support for the planned Reserve by end of June 2017 at the very latest. So time is rapidly running out.<\/p>\n

\"Beauty

Lobaria pulmonaria \u2013 red-listed lichen.<\/p><\/div>\n

Given the urgency of this situation, and in light of the FSC Russia statement, Greenpeace is requesting that the customers of the three companies demand that their suppliers publicly support the planned reserve, based on the 2011 proposed 489,000-hectare boundary.<\/p>\n

If they do not publicly support the planned reserve by end of June 2017 \u2013 along with making progress to address the other issues outlined in the\u00a0Eye on the Taiga\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0report \u2013 Greenpeace is highly likely to ask customers to suspend contracts with these companies until they make significant progress on such issues. This is where a boycott campaign would need to kick in\u2026 stay tuned for further reports.<\/p>\n

Alexey Yaroshenko is a forests campaigner with Greenpeace Russia<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaking truth to corporations has been the backbone of Greenpeace\u2019s global forest campaign for over two decades. Putting pressure on companies buying products from forest destruction has successfully helped protect the Great Bear Rainforest in Canada, create moratoria on deforestation due to soya and\u00a0cattle\u00a0expansion in the Brazilian Amazon, and deliver multiple\u00a0zero deforestation policies inside and outside Indonesia \u2014\u00a0as well as a myriad of other protections, regulations and steps towards safeguarding the world\u2019s forests from further destruction and senseless greed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":13703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_planet4_optimize_post_is_variant":false,"_planet4_optimize_experiment_name":"","_planet4_optimize_variant_name":"","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":"","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70,73],"tags":[84],"p4-page-type":[59],"class_list":["post-7226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nature","category-social-and-economic-systems","tag-forests","p4-page-type-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7226"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26095,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7226\/revisions\/26095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7226"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=7226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}