Stop Stop WWF's Betrayal of the Earth's Last Ancient Forests

http://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?
id=wwf_ancient_forest_logging



Action Alert: Stop WWF's Betrayal of the Earth's Last Ancient Forests
WWF is the world's largest ancient forest logging apologist; actively
promoting questionable "certified, sustainable" logging in Guyana,
Russia and elsewhere -- and may be the World's greatest threat facing
endangered ancient forests

By Rainforest Portal, a project of Ecological Internet - May 24, 2007


Caption: The Congo Basin and the Earth's other large ancient forests
must remain intact as ecological reserves for local, regional and
global ecological sustainability (link)

For many years the international conservation group WWF has supported
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification that first-time logging
of ancient primary and old-growth forests is "sustainable". Millions of
hectares of intact, large rainforest ecosystems have been and are being
heavily industrially logged for the first time with WWF and FSC's stamp
of approval. Ecological Internet (EI) recently reported upon Samling of
Malaysia's activities in Guyana under the name of Barama (1.3 million
ha/3.2 million acres), which received significant international bank
financing based upon assurances provided by WWF and an FSC certificate
of good forest management.

Sadly, WWF's partnering with this particular rainforest destroyer in
Guyana is not at all unique. Similar large-scale, often illegal and
highly socially and environmentally destructive logging of ancient
forests in the Congo basin countries, Russia, and Indonesia continue
with the blessing of WWF and FSC as their official policy. WWF's
greenwashing, and propagation and subsidizing of the myth of
"sustainable ancient forest logging", may be the greatest threat to the
world's remaining ancient forests.

WWF's unquestioning support for certified logging of ancient forests
has placed them in the highly controversial position of supporting
loggers against local protests, as well as at odds with ecological
science's requirements for global forest and climate sustainability.
Their efforts go well beyond promotion, as WWF's "Global Forest and
Trade Network" (GFTN) program is highly likely accepting undisclosed
amounts of money from industrial loggers to promote their certification
to FSC standards. And they continue to advocate on their behalf even
when these standards are not met. As evidence questioning their basic
premise that industrial logging of millions of years old ecosystems is
environmentally desirable or even possible continues to build, WWF has
resorted to trying to cover-up the depth to which they are driving the
ancient forest logging business. Indeed, WWF is acting like a Public
Relations agency for destructive and criminal logging.

WWF played a major role in promoting and gaining finance for the now
'suspended' and discredited FSC certificate of Barama in Guyana. You
may recall their parent company, Samling Global Ltd., was recently
listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange with support from Credit Suisse,
HSBC and the Australian Maquarie Securities Ltd. Credit Suisse
indicated they had participated on the advice of WWF. Two organizations
representing indigenous peoples in the South American state of Guyana,
the Amerindian Peoples’ Association (APA) and the Guyanese Organization
of Indigenous Peoples (GOIP), are asking the Malaysian Samling timber
group to immediately cease all logging operations on the titled lands
of the Akawini Amerindian Village on the Pomeroon River. Barama Co.
Ltd, the Guyanese subsidiary of Samling, is being accused of logging
illegally on over 400,000 hectares of tropical rainforest outside its
concessions and of operating on titled Amerindian lands without the
consent of the communities. Janette Bulkan, a leading Guyanese
rainforest advocate, has labeled Samling’s operations in Guyana “a new
vicious variant of colonialism”.

WWF once heralded the FSC certification of Barama -- the largest FSC
certified tropical logging operation -- as a "record-setting
accomplishment for tropical forest conservation in South America". WWF
worked closely with the company for some time, providing technical
advice and helping the company to get its certificate. Yet in January
of this year, Barama had its certificate suspended. During
certification evaluations in 2005-06 numerous violations of FSC
criteria were found; including illegal operations, taxes not paid, an
absence of commitment to sustainable forest management and failure to
comply with FSC policy and intent on partial certification of large
ownerships, over-cutting, absence of environmental impact permit,
failure to demarcate conservation zones in logging blocks, and failure
to manage forest of acknowledged high conservation value amongst
others.

After first intensely defending Barama and its cancelled
certification, WWF is now in full damage control mode, trying its best
to distance itself from Samling. This might be written off as a one
time poor decision by WWF; yet troublingly, it is clear that WWF have a
systematic program of working with some of the leading
forest-destroyers on the planet, have refused to say how much money
they are taking from them, and that they are subsequently defending
these companies to the hilt.

In highly similar cases, WWF is also supporting questionable
certification of primary forest logging by Terneyles in Russia (one of
the largest loggers in Russia with 1.4 million hectares/3.5 million
acres). Early this year WWF claimed that there was a "revolution" going
on in Russian forestry, and Terneyles was singled out as an example.
Amazingly this glowing recommendation was given in the absence of
required certification inspection and surveillance reports on Terneyles
covering the last two years. In the absence of such essential
components of FSC certification, WWF's statement that Terneyles is
"committed to responsible forestry" is mere conjecture. WWF must reveal
how much money Terneyles has paid them in order to join the Russian
Forest and Trade Network. It appears that after taking their money, WWF
may have successfully lobbied for Terneyles both to keep their
certificate, and for anything that challenges the validity of this
certificate to be suppressed.

Meanwhile, WWF's partner in the Congo, Danzer (one of Congo's biggest
loggers with ~2.6 million ha/6.4 million acres) has also taken measures
to try and silence local protestors by bringing court cases against
them. And then there is WWF's ‘partnership’ with the murderous
Perhutani plantation company in Indonesia, which is vehemently opposed
by local environmentalists and human rights activists. Along with the
World Bank, WWF has helped to hand out 3 million hectares (7.4 million
acres) of new logging concessions in the Peruvian Amazon. This is just
a small sample of WWF's 'partnerships' with logging companies. In fact
dozens of logging companies have paid WWF to 'join' GFTN's PR campaign.
These companies are together destroying and diminishing 24 million
hectares (59.3 million acres) of forest.

WWF is betraying the global ancient forest protection movement. Its
embrace of questionable certifications provides greenwashing to allow
industrial ancient rainforest logging to continue. WWF and other
ancient forest logging apologists must commit to working to End Ancient
Forest Logging -- a complete cessation of industrial development in the
world's remaining primary and old-growth forests. This is a global
imperative given looming climate change, species extinction and
continued indigenous abuses by rapacious "legal" and illegal industrial
loggers. Ultimately, just like any big multinational corporation, as it
seems to be only money that now interests WWF, we have to make it cost
them more to have these deals with logging companies than they get from
the deals themselves. Protest against a World Without ancient Forests
(WWF) and demand they cease their support for industrial scaled logging
of primary and old-growth forests.