Tembec’s Green Laundering Corporation Responds

Tembec has paid Smartwood to certify its forestry operations as ‘green’ and ‘well-managed’, and they got every penny’s worth. On October 11, 2007 Tembec was certified under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) by Smartwood. They held and open house for their 2008-09 logging plans and let everyone know about it.

After spending 17 years as a forest activist, I was naturally skeptical. True to form, Tembec confirmed every fear. Vince Keenan, divisional forester for the Tembec mill in Pine Falls, took me aside and showed me how he was going to cut down half of the lowland Black Spruce on his 9000 square kilometer logging area. Black Spruce is the majority species needed to feed their aging newsprint mill.

After frantically scribbling down my concerns with their plan on several of the ‘questions and concerns’ papers left on the tables, I went home and contacted the company responsible for this green-washing.

Smartwood is a company that is paid to certify logging companies under the FSC principles. I knew I was in for a ride down the techno-babble black hole when Alex Boursier, Regional Manager of Smartwood informed me that he was treating my concerns as a formal complaint under FSC complaints and appeals process.

For those of you who are not familiar with the black hole, it’s when a company wants to obscure and confuse an issue they respond with several pages of technical and double-speak. It’s designed to bore you out of your skull and hopefully you will just go away and let them destroy the planet. FSC and Smartwood has now become another layer of obstacles for conservationists to overcome in their efforts to protect forests.

I made it known that I was not to be treated with a ‘process’ and that I wanted answers to my very real and pressing concerns regarding Tembec’s logging operations.

Smartwood’s five page response was very telling.

Apparently clear cut logging is an acceptable practice for managing the Boreal Forest. Logging in Provincial Parks does not contravene FSC standards—and he backs that up by citing other atypical uses of Manitoba’s parks such as mining and hydro-electric development. I am to assume that FSC supports mining and hydro developments in Manitoba’s Provincial Parks?

Logging is still allowed in the habitat of the endangered Owl Lake Woodland Caribou herd. My questions about herbicide spraying were not answered.

The worst of his response was in about Tembec’s efforts to weaken guidelines that protect wildlife. Tembec has been in contravention of the Wildlife Guidelines several times over the past years. Manitoba Conservation has overlooked several of these violations until citizens started seeing them—and making noise. After that, Tembec started to complain that the guidelines were ‘not clear or flexible’.

One example is the line-of-site across a clear cut must not exceed 400 meters. This already weak rule is to allow for deer to escape from predators out in an open clear cut. The 400 meters allows for a maximum of 200 meters to the nearest cover. Tembec is trying to weaken this rule so that they can cut down more trees and make larger clear cuts. Quoted directly from Mr. Boursier’s e-mail to me,

“Tembec has been discussing with MC the possibility of removing these conditions from the work permit as it will continue to generate non-compliances because of a lack of clarity and flexibility in the work permit condition interpretation and a lack of clarity in how the condition will be enforced. Stakeholder interviews indicated that they believed the line of sight requirement is clear and that Tembec is not following the rules. MC does afford some flexibility over the line of sight and wildlife guideline implementation. Despite the difficulty in the work permit “line of sight” wording, the audit team feels that the concept has merit, and the compliance standard can be made more precise through discussion with MC, Tembec and stakeholder groups. “

Not only does Smartwood take money to certify Tembec under FSC principles, but they are actively supporting Tembec’s efforts to weaken the laws that protect wildlife, and in clear opposition from stakeholders. Logging companies like Tembec have a new ally in their efforts to destroy our forests, and it’s the Forest Stewardship Council.

Mr. Boursier’s response finished with insults to my intelligence. After denying me and others the preconditions for Tembec’s certification, he wrote “We are very proud of the transparency of our process.” He also apologized for not getting back to me within the timeframe of the certification and that they had ignored my concerns from as far back as 2005.

My response to his e-mail was finished within three hours. I really let him have it. If I could have yelled in an e-mail, I would have.

This also brings up a more pressing issue for the conservation movement. Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund and the Rainforest Action network are a few of the groups that support FSC. They need to pull out of the process altogether. FSC condones the destruction of old growth forests, pesticide use, logging in parks and, now lobbies to weaken existing laws.

I must give credit to the Rainforest Action Network for posting the debate about FSC on their website. They talk about reforming FSC, which I strongly disagree with, but at least they are talking about it.

http://understory.ran.org/2007/10/31/forest-stewardship-council-credibility-on-thin-ice/

I strongly believe that FSC has been completely co-opted by the logging industry. Conservation measures are watered down and made meaningless by qualified language. Conservation groups must now pull out of the FSC process because they are lending legitimacy to this dead effort. There have already been efforts to lobby Greenpeace and Rainforest Action Network to do something to improve FSC. We have already come to the day that we have to lobby large conservation groups to protect forests on a grass-roots level. What a sad day.

Ask a Sea Shepherd Crew Member

Many people ask me what its like to be a Sea Shepherd crew member. I've been on five separate trips with the Sea Shepherds and spent a total of two years on board, so I feel that I have enough experience to speak on the matter.

This is not a very easy question to answer. There are times on the ship when I've desperately wanted to go home and never return. There are also times when there is no place that I'd rather be. And there's everything in between.

The first time you get on board can set the tone for the whole campaign. I hate to say it but if there are too many young people on the crew, then morale is poor. I believe that it's because 19 and 20 year olds don't know themselves enough to handle the stress of being a sailor.

Let me also clear. Much of what we do on board—in port or at sea—is the same things sailors all over the world do. You have to live communally with room mates that you haven't chosen. You have to deal with the ferocity of the ocean on the ocean's terms. Dealing with nature on it's own terms is enough to turn most people off.

During the 2007 Antarctic Whaling campaign we came through a force 11 storm with the Robert Hunter. For all of you land lubbers a force 11 storm means winds at more than 100 kilometers per hour and waves 37 feet high.

Just brushing my teeth was one of the most physically difficult things I've ever done. I had one hand against the wall and both legs spread as much as I could to keep my balance. I was still thrown off my feet.

Dealing with the elements is one thing. Dealing with the closed-in conditions can send people over the edge. The Sea Shepherd ship Farley Mowat is a very small ship. 173 feet long and 33 feet wide sounds large for some of you who've been on smaller boats on inland waters, but it gets real small when you are away from land for more than six weeks.

My first Antarctic campaign was in 2002. We left in December and came back 46 days later in January 2003. Not only was the trip long, we also didn't find the whalers. We spent all that time getting on each other's nerves. There were a few punches thrown, feelings hurt and love made.

Some of my fellow crew members are able to stay with the ship for years at a time. I don't know how they can do it. You see so many people come and go that you become desensitized to new friendships. In 2000, I spent 7 months on board and saw the ship go from Seattle to the Galapagos Islands, Panama to Miami to Europe and the North Sea. I met 80 different crew members.

Please don't ask me all of their names.

If you get into a disagreement with another crew member—maybe you are a bit jealous of someone, or you just don't get along—you need to deal with it, directly. If you let it fester then it will quickly get out of control. In the normal world you can let problems go because you may never see that person again. On a ship you will not only see that person again, but you will be sitting across from them at every meal. You might even be working with them for eight ours every day.

If you disagree with how the ship runs, then you're really screwed. Only the captain decides where the ship goes and what is done when it gets there. Although the captain has the last word on things, the ship is run by small anarchies. Rarely does the official chain of command get followed.

It's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission. Do-it-yourself is the motto of the crew. This can and does work very well. Sometimes people drop the ball.

More later….