ABOUT

Richard Donovan is the Director of SmartWood, a Vermont-based non-profit affiliate of the Rainforest Alliance, which serves as a third-party certifier of forest lands seeking the FSC label on their products. Along with Scientific Certification Systems, a for-profit company in Oakland, California, Smartwood is the leading FSC certifier in the US.

INTERVIEW

"To say not to harvest, or to not buy anything from the forest, does not solve how those local people are going to survive."

In 1987 Rainforest Alliance was a new conservation organization, born out of concern for rainforests. It was at a time when a lot of people were talking about boycotts as a means to stop tropical forest destruction.

Rainforest Alliance's approach was a little different perspective. They were very ardent conservationists, without question, but at the same time they recognized that there are people who live in those forests-they might be small indigenous groups, they might be rural-who need to make a living. To say not to harvest, or to not buy anything from the forest, does not solve how those local people are going to survive. If you do not give people alternatives for economic livelihood, it has a negative impact on the forest.

"We have teak garden furniture in our product lines and we are not comfortable with where that furniture comes from."

Looking at what had happened in some other industries, the Alliance decided to create a program that rewards good managers, companies that are regarded as good neighbors, part of the local community, and protectors of streams and wildlife.

The Alliance then entered into a then strategic partnership with a garden furniture catalog company, Smith and Hawken. The partnership was pioneered by an environmental coordinator, Ted Teuscher. Ted met up with the Rainforest Alliance founders at a meeting on rainforest issues in New York City and said, 'We have teak garden furniture in our product lines and we are not comfortable with where that furniture comes from. We need to find an alternative.'

Smith and Hawken literally engaged Rainforest Alliance to go out and look for sources of teak that they could be comfortable with. They knew it meant cutting down trees, because wood means cutting down trees. But they did not want to go to plastics or other materials. They wanted wood products, because they felt their clientele valued wood as a resource. That was in 1989-1990.

"Sustainable partnerships are being set up between people that manage forests, and people that buy forest products."

Fast forward to today and companies like IKEA and Home Depot are associating with forestry companies that are good neighbors that manage the forest not to just get the wood out, but to think long term, to plan for a hundred years from now.

Sustainable partnerships are being set up between people that manage forests, and people that buy forest products. We never could have envisioned some of the stuff that is happening today. Companies, which we have historically heard people refer to as "Darth Vader" companies, are now coming to us and asking us to inspect their forest practices to see if they meet the SmartWood standards.

"How can you consume a product and yet feel good about where it came from?"

Rainforest Alliance started with forestry. And now we have about a thousand certifications in over fifty countries. But this is not just about forestry. This is about resource management. The SmartWood model is now being adapted for agriculture, and even tourism.

The other day I heard somebody talking about developing mining industries that are more aligned with community and environmental interests. It is hard to think of a mining company being sustainable, per se, but I think the point is to move them towards more sustainable practices. Unless people are going to stop consuming all those things, and I do not see that happening, we have to figure out how to walk this balance.

So then the question becomes what are the values associated with those products. How can you consume a product and yet feel good about where it came from? These are the questions we are asking.

"You can not take a cookie cutter and say that what we look at in this forest is the same thing we are going to look at in that forest"

Rainforest Alliance is now working in all forest types. The northern forest--Northern Canada, Northern Russia, Northern Sweden--we refer to as the "boreal." The "tropical" is where most of the rainforest in the world is found. And then there is the "temperate" forest--Vermont is in the middle of the temperate forest.

We have worked in all of the forest types looking at the same issues. Whether you are in the boreal forest or whether you are in the tropical forest, there are workers, there are local communities, and there may be indigenous people. Our expectation is that if a forest company is working in a region, they will consider the interests of those parties as they manage the forest.

The birds and the bees tend to change, depending on the forest. In the Pacific Northwest in the United States, it is the spotted owl and the marbled murrelet. In this forest we are concerned about bobcats and other types of migratory bird species. Every forest has different ecological values. You can not take a cookie cutter and say that what we look at in this forest is the same thing we are going to look at in that forest. It does not work like that. That is why in our assessor courses we train local people to be part of the auditing process.

"Every audit that we do includes a forestry professional, an ecologist or biologist, and somebody who focuses on community relations."

Every audit that we do includes a forestry professional, an ecologist or biologist, and somebody who focuses on community relations. The community relations specialist is usually a social scientist of some type, an anthropologist or sociologist. The ecologist, biologist is someone who has a lot of local familiarity. They know the plants and animals in that region and they will be able to identify the values that in that particular forest which need to be conserved and managed.

In Canada, for example, much of the land indeed has what we refer to as treaty rights or long standing use rights for aboriginal or indigenous use groups. And thus, in almost all of our audits in Canada we usually have a First Nations or indigenous auditor. We just had a training course where we trained indigenous auditors.

"It used to be all that the environmental groups did was fight industry. That has changed."

Over the last ten years there have been more and more interactions between industry and environmental groups. It used to be all that the environmental groups did was fight industry. That has changed. Now environmental groups have realized that there have to be viable economic activities. And industry groups have realized that they better honor the environmental values. Groups and organizations which historically did not talk to each other, are now talking.

About five years ago Greenpeace was extremely concerned about any harvesting in the Amazon Basin, as were we, particularly when the result was deforestation, which was happening and is happening today. They had heard that we were auditing an operation in the Amazon called Precious Woods, and they launched a big campaign. They were against any kind of harvesting in the Amazon.

We invited them to go down to visit Precious Woods' operations. Their forest activists spent a week in that forest and they came to the conclusion that society does have to figure out how to work in these ecosystems, managing for wildlife values and at the same time respectfully use its resources. Now, they are big promoters of that particular operation.

"We have created a new industry: Independent forest auditing."

In my experience what is working best with the FSC certifications system is that we have created a new industry: Independent forest auditing on a global scale. It did not exist ten years ago. There used to be a lot of skeptics about the need for it. Companies did not want independent auditors looking at their forest. That has changed.

Another big change is the forestry industry's investment in environmental values. Protecting endangered and threatened species is now part of the conversation. Are they doing it as aggressively as we would like to see? Not always. There are still forest operations out there that worry me a lot. But, generally, the environmental part of our agenda is a firmly accepted priority for the forest industry.

"Community relations are the part of the agenda that is not yet working well."

Community relations are the part of the agenda that is not yet working well. In the FSC world we use the word "stakeholder," which means people have a stake in the forest operation. They may have a direct stake--they work in the forest. They may have an indirect stake-they live by the forest. Historically, forest product companies have taken the position that it is their land, their forest operation and their business, and therefore, they do not need to think about the concern of neighbors or contractors. That has changed.

But has it changed enough? I do not think so. For too many companies the idea of stakeholder management and stakeholder consultation are still new topics. It is a very challenging dynamic. Most foresters have not been trained to interact with the public. Most foresters are not trained, even today, in how to manage recreation. Recreation is an issue and a problem that is growing in importance in almost every forest region where we work. And yet how many foresters are coming out of school trained in managing conflict related to recreation? Not enough. There are some companies that are working on this. By and large we are not doing a very good job with the stakeholder relations and the recreation management.

"If you asked Joe or Joanna Consumer, do they recognize the FSC, they will say no."

FSC is somewhere between five to ten percent of the marketplace here in the United States. In Canada it is probably five to ten percent and moving towards fifteen. The name recognition is not yet there. If you asked Joe or Joanna Consumer, do they recognize the FSC, they will say no. If you ask a forest product company, almost all of them will know the FSC name. As there is more and more product available, that reality is going to change.

We have to be smart in this process, and we have to be patient. My saying is: In forestry nothing good ever happened fast. You do not get good trees by going in and doing things for ten years. That is not the way it works. The way it works is you have to be committed to doing something for ten, twenty, thirty years.

"It seemed like a dream to envision the chain of custody being from the forest to the store floor. But that's what we have."

When we started certification we thought that we could audit and certify a forest, but not necessarily that we could keep track of where that product traveled from the forest until it got to the consumer. It seemed like a dream to envision the chain of custody being from the forest to the store floor. But that's what we have.

What we are now seeing is not only has FSC itself grown, we have spawned other certification programs, and those other certification programs now have a chain of custody standard. The same programs that lambasted the FSC for even having a chain of custody standard are now adopting chain of custody standards.

I predict that in the next ten years every certification system that relates to forest management, whether it is FSC or one of our competitors, SFI, or the Program for Endorsement of Forest Certification, or the PEFC, they will all have an improved chain of custody standard that will be close to equivalent to what the FSC is requiring.

"The marketplace will determine forest certification."

The marketplace will determine forest certification. We have companies we are working with in Canada that have gone through an alphabet soup of certification systems--CSA, SFI, ISO. Now some of them are saying that those other systems just were not quite up to snuff, and that they want to use FSC.

Many companies' initial response was that FSC was unrealistic, it was too rigorous, a pie in the sky. And now you have big companies that are going with the FSC system and they are telling other people that it works.

The marketplace, however, is not requiring companies to manage their forests to FSC standard. It is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Because the consumers are not demanding FSC products then companies do not feel pressured to do it. What is going to change that dynamic? The consumers. But also the retail companies and the distributors. If IKEA says it is important for them to be in good standing with the people who come to their stores, then I think that that message transmits.

"Matching up with a company that believes it will get good public relations and a good market share because they are associated with the FSC, that is what can make it work."

Given our limited resources, FSC's strategy is what people in the marketing would call co-branding. IKEA is helping us to brand the FSC and SmartWood. I love that. We do not have millions of dollars to invest in this, but matching up with a company that believes it will get good public relations and a good market share because they are associated with the FSC, that is what can make it work.

Every year all the major pulp and paper producers in the world get together in New York City at an event called as Paper Week. This year there was a buzz about Forest Stewardship Council and about the companies--Domtar, Temvac, Nina Paper--that are starting to produce FSC certified paper products. This was not the buzz two years ago. Things are happening. And I have to remind myself of that when I feel like they are not.

"There are basically two costs of certification."

There are basically two costs of certification. One is the cost of audits--there is the initial audit and then annual updates. These are the direct costs of certification. Our audit budgets can run from a couple thousand dollars a year for some operations to maybe ten thousand dollars a year.

What are the indirect costs of certification, or what it takes for an operation to meet our standards? It is when our auditors go out and find problems with the road infrastructure. Or when companies are not putting in water bars to control erosion, or they are not setting aside enough forest area along those rivers and streams, or if they decide to set aside a forest area and not harvest there anymore, these are all indirect costs.

"They spend more on coffee for their employees than they spend for our audit."

I get to see the annual budget of some of the companies I audit, and I know that they spend more on coffee for their employees than they spend for our audit. But I also know that the indirect costs of improving their operations are big. The question is, does that happen now, or does that happen later? We are, in a sense, doing society's work.

We cannot, however, expect things of companies that just are not realistic. Our program will go away if we do. If it is not economically viable for these companies to do it and stay in business, we will disappear as an industry. We constantly walk the line when we are looking at cost. How far can you push? What can you expect in terms of conservation? What can you expect in terms of community relations?

Our audits must account for the fact that companies need to pay their bills. They could be selling into a market place that may want certified products, or they could be selling their products in a marketplace that does not give a damn. Unfortunately, most of the world's markets right now, point blank, do not care. What has to change is the market need for certified products to keep growing. We have to be patient and keep looking for opportunities to affect that marketplace.

"Another change that has happened in the last five, ten years, is globalization."

Another change that has happened in the last five, ten years, is globalization. Globalization means that products can come from any place. It is amazing. We see wood harvested in Vermont that goes to Japan, it gets processed in Japan, and goes back to Vermont. There are hundreds, probably thousands of examples of that. Wood goes from Siberia to China to be processed and comes back to an IKEA store in Moscow.

One of the worrisome things about globalization is how do you make sure that wherever the product comes from, there is a consistent quality in management? And so SmartWood, right from the very beginning, insisted that no matter if it's a forest in Russia or Vermont or British Columbia, we have to make sure that this is all managed to the high level and to a high quality.