World Bank Woos Timber Companies
11/21/97
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Headline: World Bank Woos Timber Companies
Source: InterPress Service
Date: 11/21/97
Author: Abid Aslam
Copyright 1997 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
WASHINGTON, Nov 21 (IPS) - The World Bank, prohibited since 1991
from financing logging projects in tropical rainforests, is
attempting to woo timber corporations in a bid to promote
'sustainable logging'.
Bank President James Wolfensohn has invited the chief executive
officers (CEOs) of several global logging companies to dinner in
January, just before a scheduled meeting of Bank officials with
the companies and a select group of environmentalists.
Conspicuously absent from the list of invitees to either the
dinner or the meeting are environmental, citizens', and indigenous
peoples' groups from the developing countries where chain saws
are felt the most.
Southern participants are limited to notorious loggers such as
Indonesia's Mohammed 'Bob' Hasan and it remained to be seen what
the meeting could produce and whether forest communities would
have any say, said William Mankin, director of the Washington-
based Global Forest Policy Project.
''This is basically a fine idea that might have gone wrong -
even before it starts - but let's hope this is not so,'' Mankin
told IPS. ''Yesterday was the time to throw the cover off this
issue and let everyone look in.''
In an Oct. 6 memo to Wolfensohn, a copy of which was obtained
by IPS, World Bank environment officials say they are trying to
promote good forest management by stimulating the market for
forest products that meet international environmental standards.
Officials hope the timber CEOs will sign on to the effort at the
January meeting.
''All of this is risky business,'' said Joshua Karliner,
executive director of the California-based Transnational Resource
and Action Center (TRAC).
''The Bank has historically set up similar initiatives which
have turned out to be Trojan horses'' for corporate interests,
Karliner told IPS, highlighting the Tropical Forest Action Plan
(TFAP). That effort, established in the mid-1980s, was discredited
as evidence mounted that it was contributing to the very problems
it set out to correct.
Even staunch critics of the Bank concede that Wolfensohn and
Robert Watson, the recently appointed head of the Bank's
environment department, appear to be acting in a genuine belief
that the only way the agency can clean up the forest industry is
to engage it.
To make its initiative work, however, the Bank will have to
strike a careful balance between groups seeking protection for the
world's remaining rainforests, and governments and corporations
looking to fell and sell the trees.
The balancing act already is proving tricky. ''Green'' groups
indigenous peoples' representatives, who see sustainable logging
as an attack on forests and forest communities, have been barred
from the meeting and at least one logging company has snubbed the
Bank.
The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) representing forest peoples asked to join the
meeting but were turned down, according to the Oct. 6 internal
Bank memo.
''The issue is not our concern about the groups per se, as we
appreciate the dialogue with them very much. It is that we feel
the CEOs would not find the presence of these groups conducive to
a frank and focused dialogue on their own concerns and
constraints,'' the memo states.
Randy Hayes, RAN's founder and president, disputed that
assertion. 'It's another example of the men in grey suits cutting
deals behind closed doors,'' he told IPS.
However, because the Bank's latest initiative involves some
'greens', at least one logging company has turned down
Wolfensohn's invitation. The U.S.-based Georgia-Pacific Corp. will
not attend the January meeting and has urged other members of the
American Forest Producers Association (AFPA) to write to
Wolfensohn protesting the Bank's alliance with environmentalists,
the Oct. 6 memo says.
Some loggers contend that, by sitting down with the greens, the
Bank has tacitly endorsed forestry certification criteria applied
by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). This is the Mexico-based
NGO that, since 1993, has certified logging operations deemed to
be compliant with local laws and international environmental
principles.
Logging executives have voiced a preference for self-
certification efforts - exactly the sort of thing FSC was
established to counter.
Bank officials, however, ''have not committed ourselves to any
particular set of certification principles, precisely so we can
avoid being accused of partiality,'' the memo says. Nevertheless,
they insist that ''independent certification of sustainable
forestry is critical,'' and describe the FSC criteria as ''the
only ones we feel represent truly sustainable forestry at this
point''.
Even RAN favours independent certification - but only in
secondary forests, where logging has already taken place. Primary,
old-growth forests should be spared the axe, Hayes argued.
Suriname and Guyana are among countries with virtually intact
primary forests. ''Ways should be found to compensate such
countries for maintaining what is a benefit for the world as a
whole. They should not be made dependent on transnational logging
companies'' for their economic development, Hayes said.
While Asian countries fell what is left of their rainforest,
the Amazon forest remains largely intact. Timber companies have
turned to Latin America for new tracts to log and deforestation
rates have increased since 1994, following a slowdown earlier this
decade. In the past few years alone, timber companies have staked
out more than 11 million acres of virgin forest, according to
published reports.
Corporations expected to attend the Jan. 9 meeting include
Hasan's Indonesian Wood Panel Association (APKINDO); Aracruz
Cellulose SA of Brazil; Sweden's Assidoman Kraft Products; B-and-Q
UK of Britain; U.S.-based Caterpillar, Inc., Collins Pine, and
Weyerhaeuser Company; Finland's ENSO OY; Germany's Danzer
Furneirweke GmbH; Japan's Mitsubishi Corp.; Canada's MacMillan
Bloedel Ltd.; and the Asian Samling Strategic Corporation.
Environmental groups invited are: Conservation International,
The Nature Conservancy, and World Resources Institute, all from
the United States; and the Swiss-based World Conservation Union
(IUCN) and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International.