Is BCL up to this challenge?

Kaieteur News, 20 March 2007

Dear Editor,

I welcome the intentions expressed in SN on March 18, by the General
Manager of the Barama Company Limited (BCL) for an improvement in that
company's standards of forest management (‘Barama corrects forest
management deficiencies - expects reversal of suspension').

As Girwar Lalaram says, the requirements of the international Forest
Stewardship Council are more wide-ranging and rigorous than the Code of
Practice for Timber Harvesting of the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC),
but currently BCL is a long way short of complying with the GFC
requirements.

I recall that WWF had by early 2005 paid at least US$160,000 to help
BCL improve its performance to the FSC standard, so I am not convinced
by a WWF inspection “showing that the company has fulfilled most of the
corrective actions required”; the inspection report is not available on
the website of WWF Guianas.

Also, the major faults noted by Accreditation Services International
GmbH in the public summary of its report issued in January could not
possibly be corrected in such a short time. It is not enough for BCL to
make promises of good behaviour in future.

For FSC certification, BCL needs to demonstrate that it is actually
complying with the FSC ethos all across its legally and illegally
operated forest concessions, and putting into practice all the FSC
required actions in the area proposed for partial certification.

If BCL is indeed confident that it can show these actions in the field,
and would not that be truly wonderful, then let BCL arrange some open
days so that we can all have a look? And by “open days” I do not mean
closely shepherded tours of its Land of Canaan or Buck Hall operations.

It is about a year ago that the GFC commissioned theConsulta ncy
Proforest to develop a legality verification system for Guyana. One of
the requirements of the European Union for voluntary partnerships
agreements to allow timber to be exported into the EU in future is
independent forest monitoring, with no censorship of the reports. Is
BCL up to this challenge?


Janette Bulkan