On Saturday, March 4, investigative journalists Karlijn Kuijpers and Hanneke Chin-A-Fo published an article in NRC in the investigative series of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Based on German investigative journalists, they come to the conclusion that a lot goes wrong in world forest management and in forest management inspection organizations. As an example, the article discusses the biomass producer Enviva from the southeastern US. Enviva is the largest biomass producer in the world. See: Entire forests are being cut down – and yet that wood is called 'sustainable' – NRC.
Of course, forest management must always be monitored critically because we work with natural systems, but the piece contains a number of strange things. First of all, it gives the impression that they have revealed a secret by flying to the US and flying drones over the factory sites. That wouldn't have been necessary because you can follow everything on Google Earth. See the cover photo.
The wood flow can be easily followed via Google Earth, other satellites and the Enviva track & trace system. The Track&Trace system https://www.envivabiomass.com/sustainability/responsible-sourcing/track-trace/ provides insight into where each stand was cut down and what part of the harvest went to Enviva.
The southeastern US is a very productive region where 300 million m3 of wood is harvested annually from production forests, mainly for wooden house construction in the US. Some of it is of poor quality and is sold to the pellet industry, which produces about 10 million tons of pellets per year. This represents a share of 6% of the entire timber harvest. And yes, trucks do indeed drive onto the site with entire logs. That is no secret and is also allowed under the strict Dutch criteria. The southeastern US with these productive forests is still the only region of the US where forests function as a CO2 sequester, the west with many reserves functions as a CO2 source.
They further claim that in 25 (!) years, 340 companies worldwide have been accused of violations. That is of course little in a sector that consists of tens of thousands of companies and tens of millions of forest owners and many violations are often minor 'violations' in the practice of certification.
Then they state that certifiers are not checked. That is not true. These are all checked by an extra layer: the accreditation organizations. In the Netherlands the Accreditation Council with the accrediting institution ASI. Kuijpers and Chin-A-Fo further state that the certifiers do not do a good job in the US. This is hardly possible because hardly any forest is certified in the US. A very small part falls under SFI, sustainable forestry initiative. A very light form of certification. Very little certification is done in the private sector in the US. Forest management is properly controlled at state level and works with Best Management Practices. That is the way it is arranged in the US. Kuijpers and Chin-A-Fo cite SCS certification as an example, but it does not certify forest management, SCS has only certified the chain-of-custody part of Enviva's timber chain, this is the timber trade flow alone, not forest management.
Then they make the claim that clearcutting is prohibited. That is not the case, clear cutting is allowed, even under FSC, a strict certifier. Good forest management can also work with carefully executed clear-cutting. And finally, they confuse the terms 'timber harvesting' and 'deforestation': a timber harvest is the temporary reduction of the tree population, while deforestation is a permanent land use change from, for example, primary forest to soy production. Enviva does not deforest, it buys wood from managed forests, where forest cover is temporarily reduced. This is not deforestation.
Furthermore, the impression is given that entire trees do not meet the Dutch criteria. This is not the case, entire trees do meet the criteria. Here is an excerpt from the SDE biomass scheme for bioenergy:
“….the following categories of solid biomass that may be eligible for a subsidy:
Category 1: Woody biomass from large forest management units (≥ 500 hectares) Branches, top wood, trees and primary residues directly from forest greater than or equal to 500 ha. …”
And the term clear-cutting does not appear in the SDE scheme. Clear felling is therefore allowed, even under FSC. A clearcut is not a conversion, which is not allowed under the SDE. A conversion is the conversion of primary forest into a plantation, or the conversion of managed forest into agricultural land. This may seem to go into the details of definitions, but that's what it boils down to. And that is very important to get right. Certification is precisely details and precise wording.
Good critical journalism is necessary to improve forest management, because sometimes things do indeed go wrong in forest management. But on a good factual basis. Where the journalists do have a point is the concern about the rapid development of accounting firms that are entering the green certification market. It is worrying if PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte and KPMG throw themselves into this en masse without any knowledge of the matter. Unfortunately, there are few people in the world who understand forest management. Where KPMG will get those 100,000 new people from is a mystery. With this proliferation, the Wild West is indeed open again.
Author: Gert-Jan Nabuurs
Professor of European Forest Resources, WUR
IPCC Coordinating Lead Author
Member of the Advisory Committee on Sustainability of Biomass for Bioenergy 2017 -2020
This article could also be read on LinkedIn
