timber
Environmental Auditors Approve Green Labels for Products Linked to Deforestation and Authoritarian Regimes
Major environmental auditing firms ignore or fail to recognize glaring environmental damage caused by loggers and other clients whose practices they certify as sustainable, undercutting an elaborate global system meant to fight forest destruction and climate change. With alarming frequency, the auditors and so-called certification firms validate products linked to deforestation, logging in conflict zones […]
Read MoreEU ‘moving the goal posts’ with new timber requirement, Indonesia says
BERLIN — Indonesian officials have slammed the European Union’s proposal of a regulation that they say negates more than a decade of progress by the Southeast Asian country to comply with EU sustainable timber rules. Under a voluntary partnership agreement, or VPA, signed in 2011, Indonesia developed a system, known as the SVLK, to verify […]
Report unveils ties between Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas and Canada’s Paper Excellence
JAKARTA —Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas, which has a long history of deforestation and conflicts with local Indigenous communities, secretly controls Canadian paper and packaging company Paper Excellence, which could soon become one of the biggest pulp and paper suppliers in North America, a new investigative report has alleged. The report, Papering over Corporate Control, was […]
With FSC rule change, deforesters once blocked from certification get a new shot
JAKARTA — Environmental activists have slammed a rule change by the Forest Stewardship Council that will allow some loggers who couldn’t qualify over the past 30 years to now be certified sustainable. Known as Motion 37, the rule moves a crucial cutoff date from 1994 to 2020: Under the long-standing rule, companies that had cleared […]
Net-zero commitments must include more anti-deforestation policies, UN tells private sector
A growing number of companies are committing to net-zero emission goals in an effort to lower their carbon footprint and prevent climate change. But they’ll likely fall short if their business practices don’t do a better job of factoring in anti-deforestation measures, a new report says. Many companies with net-zero commitments have made little, tangible […]
Mongabay reporter sued in what appears to be a pattern of legal intimidation by Peruvian cacao company
In November 2020, Peruvian cacao company Tamshi filed a lawsuit against Mongabay Latam staff reporter Yvette Sierra Praeli for “aggravated defamation” over her reporting of a government investigation into the firm’s activities in the Peruvian Amazon. While the case was formally dismissed by a Peruvian court last month, it wasn’t the first time that Tamshi […]