Timber certification plan aims to protect world's forests

To cope with increasing worldwide logging, nations are introducing an certification project for environmentally friendly wood

June 7, 2000
Web posted at: 5:34 p.m. EDT (2134 GMT)

From Correspondent Margaret Lowrie

LONDON (CNN) -- A pioneering project is under way in dozens of nations to ensure forests survive civilization's ever-increasing appetite for wood.

"The Forest Stewardship Council is the first certification scheme which has established criteria for sustainable management of tropical as well as temperate and boreal forests," said Claude Martin, director-general of the conservation group World Wide Fund for Nature-International.

Their mechanism is a new market label, recognizable by consumers, called the FSC tag.

The tag will indicate that wood comes from trees grown and harvested in an environmentally and socially responsible manner, under internationally agreed upon guidelines.

At a conference in London this week, WWF announced new commitments from Sweden, Canada and Brazil to independent forest certification at a conference.

Concurrent with the conference, London hosted the largest global trade fair for certified timber and pulp. A variety of furnishings, chairs, floors, pencils and doors displayed their environmental pedigree at the fair.

More than 1,000 people from 50 different countries attended the gatherings, representing a third of the organizations harvesting the world's wood.

Certified wood products will be stamped with this FSC logo

"We intend to utilize our forests for a long time and so we have our own interests in maintaining the forest and managing the forest," said Gunner Palme of AssiDoman, an international packaging company. He said he likes the certification process because it gives customers a choice.

Environmentalists blame commercial exploitation for the rapid rate at which the worlds forests are disappearing.

The WWF says 10,000 square miles of the Congo Basin forests alone are destroyed every year. Almost 88 percent of Asia's forests are already gone. And several Asian countries face complete deforestation. Parts of Latin America face similar dangers.

The FSC hopes to prevent such a bleak future. A network of some 600 companies around the world are already enrolled in its certification system, accounting for some 56 million acres of forest in 32 different countries.

The certification program is designed to ensure the survival of the planet's forests and the industries that harvest them, and in the process give consumers a choice that doesn't cost the Earth.

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Forest Stewardship Council
WWF International

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