What exactly is Greenpaece's benefit for supporting FSC? What do they get that way?

Sorry GreenPeace, I always thought you were on the side of the natural world and to hear what I have, just recently from ecological internet, I am very sad and will in future think twice about seeing you as a front runner in the fight for the good.
I pray that you will re consider with your relationship with fsc and take seriously the findings of ecological internet.

Dear Glen,

Keep up the good work! Thank you for opening our eyes to the destructive
green wash that is trying to drown the truth.

There are thousands here in Ireland who are also fighting by your side, for
the future generations.

Best regards,

Allen Holman

Glen

can you put on your site a template letter for people to send to and object to Greenpeace's stance and support for FSC. Perhaps the same template could be used to tell WWF, RAN (and others) how badly they have got it wrong.

I for one no longer support Greenpeace or WWF for these very reasons.

regards

Stephen (UK)

Hi Glen,

Fantastic work on this exposing the greenwash of the so-called environmental groups. Surely there is no way to log an ancient forest as the ecosystem will break down and therefore the forest will cease to function - hasn't GP said this about the palm oil plantations in Indonesia?

We received some info from the UK Independence Party which showed a number of charities including FoE, WWF, Amnesty, Oxfam etc receiving funding from the EU which kind of goes against the purpose of an NGO ! Snce we read that info, we have dropped off a number of environmental group websites
and stopped paying cash (through monthly pay) to FoE. Our position on these groups is when something positive is proposed, they pour scorn on it and
why, because if an environmental tragedy was averted and saved, they wouldn't get the donations. Sad really when those that are trying to protect
the environment, are happy to keep it in peril and so they become the corporate they vehemently oppose!

Kind regards,

Mark Naughton & Denise Tansley

Hi Glen,
Thanks for this important information. I don't know if you remember, but I was one of your interns briefly at UW. Thanks for all the good work on this site. I currently live in Seattle and am working as a Regional Policy Project manager for a regional conservation org (cascade land conservancy). Hope all is well!

Hello Glen,

This news doesn't surprise me. I stopped supporting Greenpeace a long time ago when I realised they had compromised their original ideals in order to pander to their corporate benefactors.

Through naivity (or arrogance?) Greenpeace thought that by joining forces with multi-national industries they would succeed in changing industry from within.

Instead, they have Greenwashed the most powerful and destructive industries on Earth. This is a betrayal of the Green movement as a whole - a betrayal of humanity and the planet that sustains all life.

Howard de Morgan

Dear Glen
I think Greenpeace is more concerned with eye-catching publicity.
Aubrey

EI is right to identify what a cop-out this is.

More information on this here:

http://www.fsc-watch.org/archives/2008/11/04/NGOs_in_a_tangle_ove

Dear Glenn,

GREENPEACE should rename themselves GREENWASH,since it is scientifically absurd to promote ANY logging of Ancient Forests.

Dear Glen

I am a supporter of Greenpeace and WWF and also an environmental campaigner in the UK - I recently worked for Friends of the Earth. I am interested in your case. Please send me evidence of your claim that FSC causes industrial first-time logging of hundreds of millions of hectares of primary and old-growth forests.

Thanks
Steve Shaw

Dear Stephen,
To date FSC has certified just over 100 million hectares of forest in total, and their business plan calls for adding shortly an additional 200 million in coming years. We estimate that 60% of this past, current and planned certification by FSC will occur in primary and old-growth forests. This is based upon an analysis of very generalized data provided by FSC, "Global FSC certificates: type and distribution" information., accessible here:

http://www.fsc.org/fileadmin/web-data/public/document_center/powerpoints_graphs/facts_figures/08-04-01_Global_FSC_certificates_-_type_and_distribution_-_FINAL.pdf

We followed a simple methodology for our assessment. You will note forests are classified as natural, semi-natural and plantations. There is no explicit breakdown by primary/old-growth. The 60% figure is arrived at by going country to country and making assumptions about the likely sourcing of the natural forests category. For example, rainforest countries which have little history of repeat management of a given forest for multiple harvests, their certified natural forests would be mostly primary. This is true throughout the topics where very few areas have yet had multiple harvests. Similar cases can be made for Russia and Canada where large amounts of primary forests are being logged. These are area figures, and the fact that tropical rainforests have higher timber volumes would further skew the % of timber coming from ancient forests.

Ecological Internet stands by our 60% estimate of the amount of FSC timber coming from primary and ancient forests. This means some 60 million hectares of primary forests have been industrially logged for the first time and given a green seal of approval, and that another 120 million hectares are threatened now. Note also, given market trends and the state of global forests these new certificates are going to have to increasingly rely even more upon primary forests -- there just are not enough selectively managed forests to meet the market demand (this is a critical point to ponder). If FSC is allowed to continue its expansion, just under 200 million hectares will have been destroyed.

If in fact the figure ends up being 45% or some other figure, it will be small comfort that instead of 180 million hectares, "only" 135 million hectares of old growth was greeenwashed by Greenpeace, WWF, RAN and others. Regardless of whether 35% or 80% of FSC's timber comes from ancient forests, it is certainly much higher in primary rainforests, and to be increasing to meet growing demand for "green" timber. My intuition is that it is towards the high end.

This is admittedly a back of envelope assessment, but it is the best that can be done given the way FSC releases their data, their and environmental group friends' stonewalling of our information requests, and limited resources making visiting each certification unfeasible. If you know of any more definitive source of data we would be very pleased to see it. FSC for years has gotten a pass on their certification of ancient forest logging, and their data and statistics on certification reflect an effort to hide the dependency upon such logging. I would think that NGOs that are members of FSC and their campaigners would have tried long ago to access more detailed information. Prove me wrong.

Regards,
Dr. Glen Barry

the only explanation is that Greenpeace has been infiltrated by business? what else explains this?

Thank you for this valuable information. Our Community of the Sisters of the Presentation (PBVM) work on the enviornment under CARBON FOOTPRINTS. Greenpeace seems to work along with our goals.
S.Marie Therese Coleman

Thanks fr your good efforts.

I know RAN is re-evaluating their supportfor the Forest Stewardhsip Council, but greenpeace just reaffirmed their support for it. Se below. Hard to work with them, given such a strange position of forest destruction.please pass this info on to your official greenpeace contacts with a note that activists are very troubled and reconsider partnering with GP in light of this terrible news.

I have just returned from 7 weeks in Indonesia and experienced that even creating not more than a road through premieval forest is enought to start the destruction. This give illegal loggers,replaced farmers and firewood gatherers free way they otherwise don't have. FSC can not be possible without creating many roads in to the forest, every road will become a road of continuous destruction long after the FSC-logging has defenitively stopped. Maybe the worst example in the world is the (in "respect" with environment set up") PICOP logging exploitation in the Phillipines.

Let's get a letter to these people!! Greenpeace has become so monolithic it can't see it's own mandate clearly any more.....they have become big business.

Strangely, volume II of the Greenpeace report claims no formal complaints have been made against PT Sumalindo Lestari Jaya. Anybody who bothers to surf the internet will find several complaints lodged with the certifier (SmartWood Programme) in 2005, 2006 and 2008. FPP even claims the company is illegal. Are these complaints not reported to FSC, or are they hiding behind technicalities? If there have been no complaints, why is the certificate considered 'controversial' by Greenpeace?

Who can we write to in Greenpeace that might acknowledge receiving a query? Has anyone there acknowledged the independent criticism they receive from EI. After all, they were once stalwart defenders of freedom of information and independent criticism. They should embrace it whole heartedly and respond - despite their inevitable embarrassment! Great work EI.

The article is a good example of global warming. I noticed another similar one that talks about reaching the danger zone due to global warming

http://www.kanbal.com/index.php?/Latest/danger-zone-carbon-dioxide-to-blame.html

I am amazed that an organisation (one that I belong to) can possible support cutting down ancient forests which are causing not only climate change, but are destroying the natural enviroment so necessary to support all kinds of wilflife. I shall be contacting Greenpeace re this issue and will be very interested in their reply.

link--GREENCARE

The Blog Environmentalist of Solution for climate change.

ACK! F#$%^&*G twits... never EVER give money to them again. EVER.

JUDY,

As a Pathetic lone voice in favour of a planet which is not bereft of most living organisms, can I ask your organization to live up to your original credentials. Logging, ANY logging in any primary OLD GROWTH forests is tantamount to a simple death wish for life in most forms on the planet. It can’t be justified for Paper….Tasmania, it can’t be justified for firewood ….Nigeria, it can’t be justified in any guise on economic grounds, as it ultimately results in total economic breakdown as carbon heats the atmosphere and brings forward cycles of pests which decimate unimportant insects like Bees. ( I am of course being highly sarcastic about the Bee importance ) No bees = about 4 years or so to ZERO food for ALL living animals. Scotland is less polluted than some……this year many Bee keepers lost 100 %. The States, I am told, the problem is far worse.

Putting one’s head in the sand and bowing to the pressure of big multinational comities and corporations who make a business out of cutting other peoples wood down is just selling Greenpeace out. There is PROVABLY no such thing as “responsible logging” (Poacher turned gamekeeper), unless one can accept mass planting of fast growing conifers for paper as OK, at the cost of other foods…..(the fields behind my house). What one is conscious of, is the considerable similarity of feel between how Greenpeace is apparently manipulated and infiltrated by Logging interests to giving a veneer of respectability to their trade, and the continual disavowal by the American Bush Government of the war in Iraq being to do with oil. Most of Bush’s cabinet are Oilmen. ( I have worked in Oil for 35 years ) The Oil industry has fought tooth and nail against any conclusion of negative effects of Global warming and even contested the actual fact, not to mention stifling any advances in economic use of fuel, or development of more efficient engines.

It is blatantly obvious to me that the Logging interests fired by an ever increasing scarcity of wood developing a spiralling wood price, is intent on ANY subterfuge to get the trees cut. Greenpeace’s acquiescence is just one to lull the public into apathy. It is a great shame that good work by activists in the last century by Greenpeace, have been so besmirched by the current crop of cardboard “leaders” of a once proud name in ecology protection.

Just because you don’t see the fires over Indonesia or the desertification of Nigeria from Evesham or Tower Hamlets, does not mean that it won’t kill your sons and daughters.

Please,….. just a LITTLE honesty?…….they have probably paid you all plenty already to say what they want. Enough IS enough. If you and Greenpeace cannot get up and be counted in favour of GENUINE conservation, then probably the best that organization can do is just to quietly leave the room, and disband, before you are further discredited.

Tree cutting on any lager scale is not just a disgrace, it is mass genocide. Aiding and abetting genocide last I looked was a war crime, and a few bods after the Second World War were executed for it.

Have a “nice” day,

Kevin Target