SOURCE: THE HARDWOOD WEEKLY REVIEW -- 06-17-05, VOL 21, ISSUE 42

The U.S. forest products industry is currently up in arms over the issue of illegal logging... and perhaps it should be. A report by a London-based environmentalist group, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), detailing illegal logging in Indonesia, has received widespread international media coverage. Now, forest products trade magazines and industry newsletters are reporting on illegal logging, and a coalition has been formed to push legislation to ban imports of illegally harvested wood.

The reports regarding illegal logging in places like the Papua province on Indonesia are certainly disturbing. If true, illegal logging is clearly harming the environment as well as those members of the international forest products community that operate within international business and harvesting laws. But are they true? Is the source credible? And, if so, how should the industry respond?

The 30-page, February 2005 EIA report that has returned tropical timber harvesting to front-page news is publicly available at www.eia-international.org. The tenor of the report is immediately evident in the title, “The Last Frontier: Illegal Logging in Papua and China’s Massive Timber Theft,” and in the cover image of five disheveled indigenous children superimposed over piles of logs awaiting export. Sensational text builds upon what the cover implies:

This report and others from EIA detail their undercover exploits to ferret out murdering timber barons and multi-national smuggling rings. It’s a horrific story, even if only remotely close to the truth:

Every month, enough stolen Merbau is shipped from Papua to produce flooring worth in excess of $600 million at western retail prices.

Forest loss in Indonesia is accelerating; with an area the size of Switzerland lost every year.

Illegal logging robs producer countries of at least US$ 5 billion annually (from a World Bank report).

Seven million cubic meters of timber is smuggled out of Papua annually, mostly of Merbau.

Profits from illegal logging go to a few members within a complex web of middlemen and financiers collectively termed the “timber mafia,” less than half a cent of every dollar spent on Merbau flooring goes to the local forest dwellers.

Bribery, falsely flagged ships, fake documentation and under-reported loads are just a few of the smugglers’ tactics. Logs are laundered and “legalized” in Hong Kong before arrival in Mainland China.

Environmental activists that confront this illegal trade have been kidnapped, tortured and nearly slashed to death.

While a report produced by undercover representatives of an environmental activist organization might typically go unnoticed, this one has gained considerable legs in part because of its widespread retelling by the most unlikely group: the North American forest products industry.

The industry’s largest trade association, for example — the American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA) — has incorporated the findings of the EIA report (among others) into its own report, “Illegal Logging and Global Wood Markets: The Competitive Impacts on the U.S. Wood Products Industry.” AF&PA has also teamed with Conservation International and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to form the “Alliance to Combat Illegal Logging.” The AF&PA report cites estimates of the scope of illegal logging from Global Witness, Greenpeace, WWF International, Friends of the Earth, EIA/Telepak, and FERN (a European environmental organization created by the World Rainforest Movement). While the report does caution that many of the environmental non-government organization (NGO) estimates “lack persuasive evidence or supporting information,” even the unsubstantiated statistics are included in the report.1 Articles about illegal logging have also appeared in many hardwood magazines and newsletters in the last several months.

What’s immediately puzzling about all this is that the forest products industry has never embraced — and rarely ever considered — other reports from environmental NGOs in similar fashion. When the Spotted Owl issue arose in the West, the U.S. industry fought tooth and nail to prove that activists; claims were unscientific and agenda-driven. When the National Institute of Health proposed listing wood dust as a carcinogen, the industry spent millions on research to prove it was not. When environmental activists pushed green certification of U.S. forest harvesting operations, the industry fought back with scientific evidence that U.S. forestry had been sustainable for 40 years or more... in the absence of certification. When it became clear that voluntary forest certification was here to stray, the industry created its own certification system, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative®, as further evidence that it could police its own environmental house.

Historically, attacks on forestry and timber processing have been met with retaliatory accusations of junk science. We hired scientists, conducted studies and wrote papers to regain the factual high ground. While the public readily accepted environmentalist claims, we dismissed them almost without a second thought. Many in the industry, likewise, saw the environmental push for green certification as cover for a deeper agenda that was more about stopping harvesting altogether than about making harvesting sustainable. What’s different about the illegal logging issue is that North American wood products companies actually stand to benefit form environmentalist claims. So, with seemingly less concern for the validity of the science or the investigative methods, segments of the industry have now joined our former antagonists in the call to stop illegal logging of tropical timber. While is may seem like a logical response, we have to wonder whether we will be so eager to embrace similar environmental NGO claims when they are once again levied at our own forest practices?

Understand that we no more support illegal logging in Indonesia than we do in the U.S. But U.S. hardwood companies must walk a fine line in pushing for regulation and /or certification of tropical timber supplies. We haven’t been exactly willing to accept mandatory third-party certification of our own forest practices, and we’ve forever fought to keep the government out of our forest management practices, but that is exactly what we’re now seeking for tropical forests.

Further, if we’re successful in regulating illegal harvesting and trade in illegally harvested wood in Indonesia, aren’t similar efforts warranted in North America? If Indonesian forests are illegally logged, could North American forests be as well?

In fact, WWF says on its website that “illegal logging occurs in all types of forest, from Brazil to Canada, Cameroon to Indonesia, and from Peru to Russia, destroying nature, damaging communities and distorting trade.” So, while AF&PA has partnered with WWF to address illegal tropical logging, at the same time, WWF has expressly identified Canada and implicitly identified the U.S. as participants in illegal logging as well. If we’re going to push for certification of harvesting practices in the tropics, we had better be ready to accept similar oversight in our own backyard.

We believe a more reasoned approach for the hardwood sector would be to ease off on the push for a ban of illegal tropical logging and focus instead on building a vigorous global campaign to spotlight the sustainability of North American hardwoods. For one thing, it seems a bit transparent and self-serving for the hard wood industry to advocate regulation of other nations’ forests. (AF&PA actually has more credibility in this areas, in that it requires its members to participate in the Sustainable Forestry Initiative®.) Secondly, if the public and the environmental groups grow concerned enough about illegal logging, they’ll get it stopped with or without us. Our energies might be better spent positioning North American hardwoods as the green solution to the problem at hand. Unfortunately, every time the timber industry takes a licking — even if the attention is focused on shady operators on the other side of the globe— we get painted with the same brush. That shouldn’t have to be the case.

We’ve got a fantastic story to tell about North American hardwood forests, and the illegal logging issue has just thrown open the doors for us to pitch our sustainable products. The media hype has created a marketing platform that all the resource of our industry combined couldn’t have; we’ve just got to be seen as part of the solution!

Scientific forestry and environmental activism have been at odds since the environmental ideals of Gifford Pinchot and John Muir began diverging a century ago. Now, we’ve got a chance to leverage the passions, influence and vast resources of our former foes to sell more hardwood lumber around the world. The truth is, when environmentalists are campaigning against illegal harvesting, they are inadvertently campaigning for legal and sustainable harvesting,

perhaps for the first time ever en masse — and no forest in the world can match our record of sustainability. Imagine the boost to hardwood exports if Green peace and the World Wildlife Fund promoted North American hardwoods as THE sustainable alternative to illegally logged products. IF these groups were truly interested in sustainable global forestry, it’d be in their best interest as well as ours.

Unfortunately for the people and forests of Indonesia, the Environmental Investigation Agency report could be dead right I all of its findings surrounding illegal logging. Or the EIA could be stretching the truth a bit to make its point, as is suggested by the provocative language in its report, beginning with the very motion of “frontier” forests (apparently the impact of “old growth” and “ancient forests” has worn off). We’re not here to dispute the EIA findings. However, our industry’s reaction to and use of those findings should be well thought out and weighted against any possible long-term repercussions with which we are not prepared to deal.