In an article on the Friends of the High Line website responding to the campaign organized by Rainforest Relief and New York Climate Action Group, Friends of The High Line is claiming that the ipê used by the organization for the decking, bleacher seating, benches and chaise lounges on The High Line is “taken from a managed forest certified by the Forest Stewardship Council” (FSC).

FSC themselves do not certify logging but accredit those that do according to a set of their own criteria. To be sure, certification does not, and was never meant to, assure sustainability. Certifiers certify logging operations as “well managed”. According to Richard Donovan, director of the SmartWood program of the Rainforest Alliance — the largest FSC-accredited certifier, “we don't certify logging as ‘sustainable’ because we don't know what that is.”(1)

Certifiers have arrived at a definition of “well managed” through meetings, majority decisions and agreements among staff and directors of the various companies and organizations involved with bringing the idea of certification to the market. These definitions are thus arbitrary and dependent upon input from those with access to these entities and groups. On the other hand, “sustainable” is not and can never be an arbitrary definition but can only be assumed to have been achieved based on long-term (multi-generational) observations using the most rigorous methodologies.

Yet, certified operations are now, time and again, being called “sustainable” or “sustainable forestry” and the products “sustainable wood”. This is simply hyperbole and has become a dangerous and damaging myth that is sustained by the media, the industries dealing in these materials and the certifiers themselves.

Further, certified operations in old growth rainforests are in direct violation of FSC’s own Principals and Criteria. Principle 6.1 states: ”Assessment of environmental impacts shall be completed -- appropriate to the scale, intensity of forest management and the uniqueness of the affected resources -- and adequately integrated into management systems.“ Thus, given the extreme level of biological diversity in old growth rainforests, a full assessment of all plants and animals must be done before logging each and every acre. Scientists have found that the diversity of beetles alone is so great that even an acre may contain species that occur nowhere else in the world.

Most areas where certifications are taking place have never had even partial baseline studies conducted of existing biodiversity prior to logging (none have had full baseline studies) and, therefore, whether a logging operation is sustainable can and will never be known. And, according to FSC’s own principles, logging should not be happening.

This is true in all old growth forests but especially true in old growth rainforests. Scientists have found that logging on a commercial scale — even so-called “low impact” logging, is not sustainable in these forests. According to Dr. Thomas Struhsaker, a biologist at Duke University, even so-called “low-impact” logging is too intensive to protect an old growth rainforest.

Struhsaker is the lead researcher in an on-going study of the impacts of logging in an old growth rainforest in Uganda. In 1999, the study had already run for 23 years and remains the only one of its kind and the most comprehensive study yet done on the impacts of logging on a rainforest.

In an Environment News Service article about the study, Struhsaker concludes that "even so-called 'sustainable' harvesting practices are far too intensive to preserve the delicate ecology of a rainforest. He advocates that rain forest preserves be spared completely from logging. And, for rainforests that are to be logged sustainably, harvesting must mimic natural treefalls — consisting of no more than one large tree per hectare per century, done by hand to minimize forest disruption." [emphasis added] Currently, no commercial operation can survive cutting so little over so long a period.

To complicate matters further, many companies selling tropical hardwoods in the US tout their “Chain of Custody” (COC) certification (which allows them to sell certified wood), thus implying that the wood they sell is certified. But certified wood must carry a Forest Management certificate from the company doing the logging, not just be sold by a COC-certified supplier. We have seen numerous companies duping clients into believing that all their wood is certified simply because they have a chain of custody certificate — a problem about which we have repeated informed the FSC, who, as far as we have seen, have done nothing to stop it. Friends of the High Line has yet to produce a forest management certificate.

Many organizations are opposed to industrial logging in old growth forests and are opposed to certifications that involve such logging. Friends of the Earth has changed their policy regarding FSC and no longer recommends FSC wood, mostly due to irregularities in certifications, including those involving logging in old growth forests.

The Rainforest Foundation compiled a report criticizing the FSC titled “Trading in Credibility”. In the report, numerous problems, including illegal logging outside concessions to support the demand for particular species, were documented.

For more information on FSC, see www.fsc-watch.org/.



(1). 1994 and 1996, Personal communication with Richard Donovan