Preserving natural habitat becoming huge challenge

Climate change challenge involves the protection of environment as a key element. As a matter of fact, environmentalism predates climatology as we know it today.

One of the aspects of environmentalism is preserving natural habitat, including forests, and the biodiversity it brings with it. It has also been found that forests are natural carbon sinks of immense value, even as the oceans are. It is in this context that the investigative report of Western news agency, Reuters, about ‘sustainable logging’ in the forest area of Ontario in Canada, brings to the fore that there is a nexus between the timber industry and non-profit watchdogs which issue certification of safe logging.  The Reuters report shows that old forests which are more than 100 years old are being cleared by the timber companies, and they are doing so under the certification provided by the watchdog. An analysis of the forest cover showed that primal forest areas in Ontario, about 377 square miles, which amount to the combined size of New York and Washington DC have been cleared, leading to denudation.

There are two certifying agencies at work in Canada, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), set up in 1993 and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), which was founded in 1994 by the timber industry group. In their bid to attract companies to their certification system, and the companies in turn provide financial support, the two organisations have been compromising their standards. It turns out that the SFI had to dilute its criteria because of the FSC in order to stay in business as it were. Reuters had talked to representatives of the two certification organisations, and they have defended their positions as tenable. But satellite evidence analysed by Reuters with the help of experts shows a clear decline in forest cover.

There are complicated questions at stake here. It was felt that government-mandated laws would be difficult to implement, and also there is enough pressure from industry lobbies to keep the rules flexible, ambiguous and friendly towards the industry. The second option was to get a non-governmental organisation comprising environmentalists and timber industry representatives to sit at a negotiating table and evolve mutually agreed standards and to keep to them. That was indeed the intention of FSI. But soon the industry came with its own NGO to issue certification. This would have worked as a voluntary arrangement, and it is perhaps the best way of dealing with the issue, but it is not working because of the timber industry trying to work around the rules. It is not just in Ontario, where the Reuters investigation was focused, but also in other parts of Canada like British Columbia and in Quebec, the forest cover is being diminished by predatory logging.

The inference to be drawn out of this inefficient and even dishonest nexus between the certification NGOs and the timber industry is that people on the ground have to be on the alert, and there is need for strict auditing. The much-too-close-for-comfort relationship between the NGOs and the industry needs another layer of oversight. And it has to be by the local communities because governments are too engrossed in power arrangements.

The communities will have to force governments to take action, and penalise both the industry and the watchdogs. It may appear a cumbersome process but there is no escape from it. Legislatures will have to make stringent environment and climate-related laws, and the communities must seek judicial intervention as and when it is needed. This would require the kind of investigative reporting carried out by Reuters. Independent news establishments are under tremendous pressure from industry lobbies, which wield tremendous influence in governments. But the battle for preserving the environment has to be fought against all odds.