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Focus on the Far East

Interview with Aleksey Y. Grigoriev, an expert on forestry issues at the Socio-Ecological Union, by Anatoly Lebedev, Chair of the Bureau for Regional Public Campaigning in Vladivostok.

AL: Putting myself in the place of the timber industry in the Russian Far East (RFE), I can understand why companies operating here are not eager to become certified. Indeed they violate every environmental standard of forest harvesting. Survival is their number one priority. If timber companies were to attempt to invest more financial and human resources and produce smaller volumes of wood in order to accommodate certification, they would collapse. With this in mind I would like to ask to what extent can the consumer market influence the emergence of certification in the RFE?

AG: If timber companies are teetering on the edge of economic breakdown, their only potential for survival today is to find and create a firm niche in the world market. Earning a reputation as a producer of "environmentally friendly" goods implies additional costs and extra labor, but it is also highly promising. You can say that in Russia the only concern is to survive, yet I do not think that companies should be overly apprehensive about the initial costs of certification.

For example, at the conference on voluntary certification in Petrozavodsk, Russia (November 1998), some of the largest European timber buyers declared their intention to purchase only certified timber once a sufficient supply is available. Currently, the flow of certified timber on the market is on the rise, thanks in large part to the milestone year for certification in 1998 when the first national Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standards were endorsed in Sweden. The Swedish timber industry turned out to be quite flexible in the FSC process and subsequently, the portion of this industry's certified timber supply has expanded on the European market.

Unlike the European market, environmental awareness has not yet emerged in the Southeast Asian market. So, the need for companies in the RFE to change their environmental policies is not as pressing as in other parts of Russia. I would predict that Japan, despite its current reluctance towards environmentally friendly goods, will become integrated into the certification market in the future. South Korea and China, however, are still a long way from this market. Nonetheless, these countries cannot remain isolated from the tendencies in the world market: the USA, where certification is gaining wider acclaim, could influence the policies of the timber industry in China, for instance.

AL: Is it possible to track the environmental standards of timber, if it is processed in a second or third country from its origin? What are the implications of this?

AG: This is absolutely possible, especially for individual species, such as ash, in the RFE. The Chinese are major importers of ash and they know about the barbaric ravaging of ash forests in the RFE. Sooner or later, their concern over this issue will grow. As far as I know, China's economy is greatly manipulated by the government. Thus, if the government decides to halt its contribution to the destruction of these forests, I do not know what the Chinese will do with the products they process from ash; the market for this timber will be lost.

AL: How does certification interact with the principle of free trade?

AG: The concept of free trade does not sanction environmental tendencies in the market. But the international certification systems, FSC and ISO 14000, are voluntary; no one is forced to participate. Essentially, it is the timber producers and consumers who define the principles and strategies of environmentally acceptable forest management. If producers manage to persuade consumers that they [the producers] do not need to be certified, then the process of certification will come to a standstill. However, European companies, such as Enso, have demonstrated that a reasonable producer is interested in certification for strategic reasons. Certification, a struggle of beliefs, signifies free competition in the long run.

On the other hand, another system of certification, the system of obligatory certification drafted by the Federal Forest Service seems to be irrelevant from an international viewpoint. In the RFE, the Federal Forest Service's latest move to reallocate a territory slated for protection (the Verkhne-Sukpaisky Zapovednik) to the Malaysian timber company Rimbunan Hijau completely discredited the Federal Forestry Service in the eyes of conservationists. They now have little faith that this agency will stand behind its proclaimed interest in committing to long-term forest conservation.

Although ISO-14000 is also a voluntary certification system, in a given country it is the government, as opposed to buyers and producers, which presides over this certification process. NGOs are excluded altogether.

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