There is currently considerable public confusion due to the existence of a huge variety of 'eco-labels' on timber products, along with claims concerning 'environmentally acceptable' or 'sustainably produced' timber. There is further confusion over various international initiatives for forest certification and eco-labelling schemes, such as the Forest Stewardship Council. This briefing aims to try and clarify some of these issues.
Friends of the Earth first proposed environmental certification/labelling of timber when it launched its rainforest campaign in 1985, and discussions on timber labelling initially related principally to tropical timber.
Eco-labelling of timber products would serve two basic purposes. Firstly, it would enable the consumer to avoid non-labelled (and therefore, environmentally unacceptable) products. Secondly, it would give logging companies an incentive to harvest timber carefully, by providing access to 'green' markets, in which products often command a premium price.
The proposal was largely ignored by industry and government for the first few years, and Friends of the Earth went on to develop its own labelling scheme, in the form of the 'Good Wood Seal of Approval' (1).
Following the launch of FOE's scheme, and under growing pressure from consumer boycotts, timber importing and retailing companies began to appreciate the need to identify timber products with environmental 'acceptability'. The result was a proliferation of labels on timber products (mostly tropical), usually produced by the manufacturing or retailing company itself, bearing claims such as 'Ecologically Sound' and 'from Sustained Yield Production' (2).
Whilst some of the claims were supported by certificates from the governments of the exporting countries, none could be independently verified. Most of the claims disregarded the best technical information from bodies such as the International Tropical Timber Organisation, which suggests that there is virtually no sustainable logging anywhere in the tropics (3). Of 80 companies surveyed in 1991 by the World Wide Fund for Nature, the environmental claims of only three could in any way be substantiated (4).
Even the UK Timber Trade Federation has been forced to recognise that 'members of the trade who claim to have certified proof of sustained yield are laying themselves open to unscrupulous people or inadequate certification' (5). Nevertheless, misleading and dishonest eco-labels on timber products have continued to proliferate. Increasingly, such claims are being made in relation to non-tropical wood products, such as those from Scandinavia.
In an effort to try and stop what had become, for the consumer, a hopelessly confusing deluge of claims and counter-claims, FOE proposed in 1989 that the ITTO should investigate the possibility of setting up a globally agreed timber certification and labelling system (6). The proposal was supported by the UK Government's Overseas Development Administration, which offered to provide the £90,000 necessary for the study. However, the proposal met with fierce opposition from tropical timber exporting countries, who insisted that all direct references to labelling schemes should be excised, which was duly done. The remnants of the project were then given to research institutions and individuals in the UK known to be antithetical to environmental concerns. Vital information giving positive indications for the likely acceptability and possibility of labelling was suppressed by the authors, and the resulting report was inconclusive (7).
The ITTO later convened a two-day seminar on certification, but this too proved to be inconclusive. Given that the ITTO remains concerned only with tropical timbers, there is little scope for its involvement in timber certification schemes, which would inevitably have to deal equally with timber from all sources, tropical and non-tropical.
Only one government - that of Austria - has attempted to establish a mandatory labelling scheme for timber. This scheme was initially intended to apply only to tropical products, and would have required a label to be placed on all tropical timber goods stating the country of origin and giving notice that the product was derived from a tropical forest source. After protests from a number of tropical countries, but particularly from Malaysia, the scheme was dropped, and replaced by a voluntary programme under which companies may apply to a special commission for a 'sustainability' label for either tropical or non-tropical timber products.
The UK's Minister for Overseas Development, Baroness Lynda Chalker, has stated that "it may be that, in the long run properly designed and implemented labelling schemes could play an important role in encouraging sustainable management by enabling consumers to make a choice between timber from sustainable and unsustainable sources" (8). However, following the debacle arising from the proposed ITTO project, and in the face of evident opposition from the timber industry, the ODA has made no further attempts to establish such a system, or to provide support for other initiatives, or even to properly study the feasibility of such schemes.
A number of organisations and companies now offer independent certification of forestry operations. In the UK, the Soil Association, under its Responsible Forestry Programme, has set up the 'Woodmark' scheme, described as 'an independent timber certification scheme set up to provide a reliable way of identifying timber from genuinely well-managed forests' (9). In a separate initiative, the Forest Industry Committee of Great Britain (FICGB) has set up a wood labelling scheme also called 'Woodmark'. The FICGB scheme does not offer guarantees of independent assessment of compliance with environmental or social criteria, but simply indicates that the labelled timber is of UK origin.
In the United States there are at least three companies - including Green Cross and the Rainforest Alliance's 'Smart Wood' programme - which now offer, on a commercial basis, some form of environmental and social assessment of logging operations.
Whilst independent certification such as to be carried out by the Soil Association is more reliable than industry self- certification schemes, the proliferation of such schemes is in itself also a potential source of confusion. Until recently, there has been no means by which the consumer could know what standards each of the various certifying companies worked to, whether they were comparable, and which, if any, were preferable.
It is in response to such uncertainties that the Forest Stewardship Council has been established. The FSC, which was launched in October 1993, brings together concerned members of industry, conservationists and certifiers in order to establish a set of Principles and Criteria which should be adhered to by all forest certifiers and labelling schemes to ensure consistency and reliability. The certifiers themselves thus have to be certified. The Principles and Criteria will be applied equally to assessment of tropical, temperate and boreal forestry operations.
The FSC is a membership organisation, and the first applications for memberships were being approved in May 1995. The organisation has a small permanent secretariat based in Oaxaca, Mexico. It is anticipated that special FSC Boards will be established to implement the scheme in each of the various countries in which it will operate. In May 1995, work had begun on the development of specific 'standards' by which forestry operations in the UK could be assessed for certification purposes.
Friends of the Earth has been closely involved in monitoring the development of the FSC since 1991.
There does now appear to be broad consensus amongst industry and government on the need for timber labelling of some kind. However, there are widely divergent views on the type of scheme which would be acceptable. The principle consideration for most governments appears to be that such a scheme should be voluntary and require the minimum of policing. The UK timber industry is tending to support the development of schemes based on national audits of forests, such that the timber exported from entire countries would be certified as 'sustainable'; even a regional self-certification scheme is now being proposed by the African Timber Organisation.
The aim of most of these proposals appears to be to provide a marketing tool for companies facing consumer resistance to their products, rather than a real incentive to improve the environmental performance of the logging industry or to provide consumers with reliable information. For example, any scheme based solely on national audits would fail to distinguish between good and bad logging operations within the same country. It would therefore potentially benefit companies with an appalling environmental record in a positively audited country, whilst discriminating against ecologically sensitive companies operating in countries which, overall, fail the national audit.
Friends of the Earth believes that there are two basic features required of a credible and workable timber certification and labelling scheme: firstly, certification should be conducted by independent organisations operating to globally agreed principles and criteria; secondly, it should receive some form of official backing, as is now occurring under European Community eco-labelling rules.
The Forest Stewardship Council scheme for accreditation of certifying organisations offers the possibility that independent assessments will be conducted to globally agreed principles.
Friends of the Earth Special Briefings
Sustainability and the Trade in Tropical Rainforest Timbers (General
issues)
Sustainability and the Trade in Tropical Rainforest Timbers -
country briefings on the following timber supplying countries: Brazil,
Cameroon, Cote D'Ivoire, Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines.
Sustainability and Logging in Canada
Timber: Types and Sources
Timber: The UK Timber Industry's 'Think Wood' and 'Forests Forever'
campaigns
Leaflet
Disappearing Forests and the Timber Trade (16pp)
Reports
Out of the Woods - Reducing Wood Consumption to Save the World's
Forests: A Plan for Action in the UK (152 pp)
Forests Foregone: The European Community's Trade in Tropical Timbers
and the Destruction of the Rainforests (214pp)
Whose Hand on the Chainsaw: UK Government Policy and the Tropical
Rainforests (82pp)
Plunder in Ghana's Rainforest for Illegal Profit: An expose of corruption,
fraud, and other malpractices in the international timber trade
(121pp)
The International Tropical Timber Agreement: Conserving the Forests
or Chainsaw Charter? (40pp)
(1) The 'Good Wood Seal of Approval' scheme was discontinued, in line
with FOE's policy concerning corporate endorsement, at the end of 1990.
Some companies that were granted the 'Seal of Approval' have persisted
in using the award, although Friends of the Earth does not sanction
or support such use, and will take appropriate action where such abuses
are discovered.
(2) For further information on definitions and criteria for sustainable
timber production, the reader should refer to Friends of the Earth Special
Briefing 'Sustainability and the Trade in Tropical Rainforest Timbers',
(see above, Further Reading).
(3) The International Institute for Environment and Development conducted
an assessment of sustainability in the tropical forests of the member
countries of the ITTO. The report concluded that "The extent of
tropical moist forest which is being deliberately managed at an operational
scale for the sustainable production of timber is, on a world scale,
negligible". (Poore D)
(4) Read M. 1991. Truth or Trickery? An assessment of claims of 'sustainability'
applied to tropical wood products and timbers retailed in the UK, July
1990 - January 1991, WWF, Godalming.
(5) Mallinson T (President of the TTF) report in the Timber Trades
Journal, 30 September 1989.
(6) The ITTO is the body to which most major tropical timber exporting
and importing governments belong, and which is supposed to promote the
trade in sustainably produced timber.
(7) Oxford Forestry Institute, 1991. Incentives in Producer and Consumer
Countries to Promote Sustainable Development of Tropical Forests,
pre-project report for the ITTO, OFI/Timber Research and Development
Association, February 1991, Oxford, England.
(8) Letter from Baroness Lynda Chalker to Joan Walley, MP, 13 May 1993.
(9) For further information on the 'Responsible Forestry' scheme, contact:
Soil Association, Bristol House, 40 - 56 Victoria Street, Bristol, BS1 6BY.
(10) For further information on the Forest Stewardship Council, contact:
Dr Timothy Synnott, Director, FSC, Avenida Hidalgo 502, 68000 Oaxaca,
Oaxaca, Mexico.
Simon Counsell
June 1995
Published by Friends of the Earth Ltd
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Contact details:
Friends of the Earth
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June 1995
Simon Counsell
Last modified: Jan 2002
