FSC Watch
FSC Watch is a group of individuals who keep an eye on the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and publish their findings on a frequently updated website. Members of the group include disillusioned FSC supporters who are very concerned about the constant and serious erosion of the FSC’s reliability and consequent loss of credibility.
The group includes Simon Counsell, one of the Founder Members of the FSC; Hermann Edelmann, working for a long term FSC member organisation; and Chris Lang, who has looked critically at several FSC certifications in Thailand, Laos, Brazil, USA, New Zealand, South Africa and Uganda - finding serious problems in every case.
Their Concerns
As with many other activists working on forests worldwide, they share the frustration that whilst the structural problems within the FSC system have been known for many years, the formal mechanisms of governance and control, including the elected Board, the General Assembly, and the Complaints Procedures have been highly ineffective in addressing these problems.
The possibility of reforming - and thus ’saving’ - the FSC through these mechanisms is, they maintain, declining, as power within the FSC is increasingly captured by vested commercial interests.
They believe that unless drastic action is taken, the FSC is doomed to failure. Part of the problem, is that too few FSC members are aware of the many profound problems within the organisation.
Their Views
The FSC Secretariat continues to pour out ‘good news stories’ about its ’successes’, without acknowledging, the numerous complaints against certificates and certifiers, the cancellation of certificates that should never have been awarded in the first place, the calls for FSC to cease certifying where there is no local agreement to do so, the walk-outs of FSC members from national processes because of their disillusionment with the role of the economic chamber, etc. etc. etc.
There has been no honest evaluation of what is working and what is not what working in the FSC, and no open forum for discussing these issues.
Their Website
The FSC Watch website is an attempt to redress this imbalance. The site will also help people who are normally excluded from the FSC’s processes to express their views and concerns about the FSC’s activities. FSC Watch is a very worthy group doing an important job to help save the rainforest and keep global warming to a minimum.
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