To date, Barama Company Limited has not made public its plans to get back on track with certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) after the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) announced that the company had been suspended.
The company had confirmed that its forest certification from the FSC has been suspended for three months because it failed to comply with certain conditions under the certificate. An audit of the certification was done in late November by SGS-Qualifor, an independent FSC-accredited certification body.
Barama is said to have the largest single concession of natural tropical forest to be certified in the world, encompassing some 570,000 hectares.
And Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud has said that he has met both Barama and the GFC on the issue and he and the Ministry are seeking more information from the FSC on the decision to suspend Barama from the FSC certification.
He said that the GFC was asked to look at the SGS report closely and that the Ministry was addressing the matter with the intention of making a more substantive statement on it.
Barama’s General Manager Girwar Lalaram was said to be out of the country when this newspaper called yesterday for an update on the company’s plans for corrective action with regards the certification.
Lalaram had said last week that the company would be issuing a statement on the issue after meetings with SGS and FSC.
He said that the company would have been making public the findings of the SGS report after meetings with the agency and other parties.
Staff of the WWF had met with Barama officials to discuss the company’s adherence to responsible forest management practices that the FSC standards mandated. And during that process, WWF said, it became increasingly clear that Barama neither carried out nor gave priority and resources to many of the improvements the company had committed to pursue.
In a release, WWF expressed deep disappointment with Barama’s failure to comply with the certification and called on the company to do whatever it takes to get back into full compliance with the FSC’s rigorous environmental, social and economic standards.
SGS in February 2006 awarded Barama FSC certification for its concession after months of work on Barama’s part.
WWF had provided the financial and technical support to Barama in the process leading up to its successful certification.
Barama is at the moment under the scrutiny of the Government and the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) and has been asked to work towards certain time-bound benchmarks in the area of downstream processing and other issues. The Minister of Agriculture said that the Government is monitoring this company to ensure that it lives up to its commitments.
The WWF has called on Barama to make a public statement indicating that the company is serious about attaining and practising responsible forestry according to the rigorous standards of the FSC and also committing to a transparent, time-bound action plan to address all the deficiencies as specified by SGS and as required to be compliant with FSC certification.
Barama is owned by Malaysian investors and began operations here in the early 1990s. (Johann Earle)
