Green gold : on variations of truth in plantation forestry

The "variations of truth in plantation forestry" is a study on the Teakwood investment program. Teakwood offered the general public in The Netherlands the opportunity to directly invest in a teak plantation in Costa Rica. The program was pioneered in 1989 and truly gained momentum when it was joined by the world's largest environmental organization WWF and an insurance and banking company called OHRA in 1993. Thousands of people invested, many millions of Guilders were transferred and about a dozen teak investment programs in The Netherlands alone followed in its wake. Teakwood offered 'green gold' (OHRA, Summer 1993), it was heralded as 'modern development work' and it attracted broad media attention. The strong proposition of Teakwood attracted the involvement of the Government of The Netherlands (Romeijn, April 18, 1996). From November 1995 onward, the Teakwood investment program increasingly met with opposition. OHRA terminated its Teakwood investment program in the autumn of 1996.The Teakwood investment program was introduced to the market as being based on solid and conservative assumptions on timber yield and financial return. The present study presents a description of the erosion of the credibility of these assumptions by following key statements over time. These statements, or "variations of truth" come from the Teakwood contract partners themselves and from organizations and individuals which the Teakwood contract partners have recognized as authoritative, including the Rainforest Alliance and the Forest Stewardship Council, FSC. The Rainforest Alliance is based in the USA and it certified the Flor y Fauna forest operation as 'well managed' in 1995. The FSC is an organization which is based in Mexico. The FSC accredits forest certification organizations worldwide and it endorsed the Rainforest Alliance certificate for the Flor y Fauna plantation management in January 1998. However, the Flor y Fauna plantations management were found to show no evidence of complying with a several FSC Principles and Criteria.WWF proclaims that the FSC accreditation is the only credible initiative in the field of forest certification and forest products labeling and that the FSC label can help avoid confusion with consumers. Timber products that are derived from forests that are certified by FSC accredited organizations may carry the FSC label. This includes the products that may one day be derived from the Flor y Fauna plantations. According to WWF, the consumer is confused by a proliferation of dubious certification and labeling initiatives:"How do you know whether environmentally-friendly claims are true?The answer is, you don't unless the product bears the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Trademark. This confirms that the wood used to make the products comes from forests which have been independently inspected and certified as well-managed according to strict environmental, social and economic standards" (WWF, June 16, 1998).The assumptions for the projected rates of return to investors of the Teakwood investment program and key statements on its certification were scrutinized by a wide range of organizations and public bodies. These include - but are not limited to - the FSC, Rainforest Alliance and WWF. They were also examined by Courts of Law, The Ministry of Agriculture, the Advertising Standards Committee and the Consumer Organization in The Netherlands. Ranges of justifications were given for the assumptions that form the basis for the projected rates of return and for the forest management certificate. These justifications are analyzed in the present study as "variations of truth" and compared with the original statements upon which they rest.Credibility, transparency and accountability are as essential to forest certification as they are to building a 'civil society'. The "variations of truth" are examined in the light of these three properties. The author of the present study published a series of annotated Teakwood pronouncements, or 'variations of truth', as Treemail Internet circulars to professionals worldwide, between January and July of 1996. These Internet circulars were found to produce an increasing pressure on the Teakwood contract partners and their associated organizations, much in analogy to a feedback loop in sound reproduction. This feedback was found to generate pressure if additional statements and justifications from these organizations were published in new circulars and if these statements were in-consistent, un-transparent or non-accountable. One example of the pressure from the feedback process is found in a complaints procedure that the Rainforest Alliance felt compelled to invoke and execute, although no complaint was ever filed. This feedback process, including the Rainforest Alliance complaints procedure, is analyzed. The quality of the data provided in the Internet circulars was safeguarded by the peer pressure of the professional recipients worldwide.Independence is accepted as being a cornerstone to third party certification. This study raises grave concerns over the meaning, interpretations and perceptions that are attributed to the term 'independence' under the FSC accreditation umbrella. The study describes the elasticity of interpretations attributed to the term with respect to the WWF involvement in the case of Flor y Fauna. WWF's role was found to include - but not to be restricted to - a role as direct beneficiary of the timber proceeds, sales agent for the plantation's timber, as funder, founder and promotor of the FSC, and as holder of Board Membership within the FSC. Independence was indeed found to be proclaimed vital by the accrediting and certifying bodies alike and indeed by the very Teakwood contract partners, including WWF. This particular issue of independence thus makes the Flor y Fauna case one of fundamental - rather than scandalous, transpired or passing - relevance to the international forestry profession.The certification of forest management and the labeling of forest products count among today's top issues in the field of international forestry. In 1998, the World Bank and the WWF, an organization that describes itself as having played a key role in setting up the FSC, formed a global alliance for forest conservation and sustainable use, which includes the aim to bring the management of an additional 200 million hectares of the world's forests under independent certification by the year 2005. This aim of the current joint World Bank and WWF global initiative is a parameter of the relevance of the subject matter of the present study.Erosion of credibility of the justification for the projected rates of return and the forest management certificate is established in the course of this study. Of course, only key findings are presented in these paragraphs, accessory data being left out. It is established that, in contrast with earlier pronouncements and in contrast to the conditions for plantation management certification by the Rainforest Alliance, OHRA has stated in court that the Teakwood projections are higher than anything described in the scientific literature. It is proven that the justification by the Teakwood contract partners and the Rainforest Alliance of the projected proceeds on the basis of the sale of timber against 'imputed log values' is incongruent with sale of the standing timber as it is stipulated in the contract between OHRA and the Teakwood investors.It is established that the Rainforest Alliance, WWF and OHRA presented data on the production of biomass, rather than of wood, to corroborate the projected yield and returns of the Flor y Fauna plantations. This too, is not congruent with the text of the sales brochures, where the calculations and yield figures are based on the production and sale of wood, not of biomass. It is established that there are grounds to assume that there exists a sound legal basis upon which it may be possible to have the Teakwood investment contracts declared dissolved by courts in The Netherlands. It is established that, by untruthfully claiming that no agrochemicals are used at the Flor y Fauna plantation, the WWF joins the ranks of those that the WWF itself accuses of making false claims of environmental friendliness of their forest products.It is established that advertisements for Teakwood and a WWF booklet contained a false claim to an FSC certificate for the Flor y Fauna plantations. The advertisements were circulated millionfold. However, the FSC does not issue one single certificate, it is there to accredit certifying organizations. In this light, the research by the Rainforest Alliance and the WWF of January and February of 1996 that both proved incapable of detecting even one single advertisement that contained the false claim can be called most peculiar. OHRA submitted the WWF and Rainforest Alliance 'research' results in evidence at a court. The credibility of FSC's conclusion that the false claim to a certificate was 'unintentional' is found to be erosive. It is established that the FSC Director and the FSC Board Members are informed about all these matters.Collages of supposedly scientifically sound research were presented in court and in an FSC accredited complaints procedure and, without compliant by the Rainforest Alliance, these were accepted as evidence. These were accepted even if the entire reports remained confidential and inaccessible to the other party or parties in the dispute. The Rainforest Alliance conducted what it terms a complaints procedure in a case where no complaint was ever filed. It did so without notifying to the plaintiffs it had appointed that such a procedure was held. It did so on its own accord and without requesting any information from those who it had declared to be 'plaintiffs'. The Rainforest Alliance did specify neither the complaint, nor the full identity of the defendants. The Rainforest Alliance circulated the results of the complaints procedure over the Internet before it had sent out copies to all those it had named as 'plaintiffs'. The final outcome or 'ruling' of this obscure complaints procedure was found to be critically flawed in most key aspects. The FSC, which was itself "in almost daily contact" with the Rainforest Alliance over the Teakwood case, declared this handling of the non-existing complaint "acceptable" and thus firmly introduced the element of eroded credibility within the jurisprudence of FSC accredited complaints procedures.The present experimental study demonstrates that information infrastructure is profoundly affecting our perception of credibility, transparency and accountability. In the Flor y Fauna case, flat text Internet circulars that were distributed via e-mail provided the core of the communication technology. Professionals worldwide were informed and they could make their own judgement regarding the accountability of environmental and financial claims made in the Flor y Fauna case. Further proliferation of information technology, miniaturized video cameras and enhanced remote detection techniques can be expected to enhance the perceived need for activities that are economically and environmentally accountable on grounds of visual proof, even where these activities are located on the other side of the globe.This study shows that, and how, the Internet provided a novel instrument to enhance professional ethics worldwide. If properly employed it can help to extract accountability from organizations or individuals that may not naturally be so inclined. This study confirms that the Internet, with the ease of worldwide communication it provides, has a role to play in working towards a 'civil society'.Green Gold: on variarions of truth in plantation forestry.P. Romeijn, 1999. Treebook 2 (ca 220pp + CD-Rom)Treemail Publishers, Heelsum, the Netherlands.ISBN 90-804443-3-2 (soft cover)ISBN 90-804443-3-2 (hard cover)Available from:NHBS Mailorder Bookstore,http://www.nhbs.comPaperback stock code: #90134Hardback stock code: #90135Further information:http://www.treemail.nl