Barama Company Limited (BCL) is confident of being back in good stead with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) after a pre-audit inspection by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) shows that the company has fulfilled most of the corrective actions required.
The company’s five-year FSC certification had been suspended for three months after it failed to live up to stringent environmental and safety standards.
Both BCL and its auditor SGS-Qualifor were found to be deficient at varying levels by Accreditation Services International (ASI) after an audit late last year leading to the three-month suspension of BCL’s certification.
The FSC’s Annual Surveillance of SGS for 2006 found that BCL had been deficient on a number of fronts, including harvesting on Amerindian reservations, logging outside of its concession, basic health and safety requirements for workers, no evidence of sustainability in harvesting, failure to perform the relevant environmental impact assessments and the unsafe disposal of environmentally hazardous waste.
This newspaper spoke to General Manager of BCL Girwar Lalaram on the steps the company has taken to get back on track with the certification, which would guarantee certain markets in Europe and North America and he said the feedback from the WWF inspector has been positive. “We had a meeting with the auditors in South Africa SGS-Qualifor, and they accepted in writing that there was a lack of communication in terms of the procedure. Further to that, there were procedural lapses where the management of Barama was not given the opportunity formally to make a response to issues raised by the audit team,” Lalaram said.
Following that meeting, “we went to Germany where we discussed some of the corrective action requirements (CARs) and after prolonged discussion on the issues we agreed that Barama will not seek FSC reinstatement until such time that all the CARs and criteria have been met.”
ASI’s report said areas outside BCL’s compartments of forest under evaluation were not managed in the spirit of the FSC and major nonconformities were witnessed.
During the ASI surveillance audit, SGS did not adequately evaluate the company’s compliance with the company’s own procedures regarding illegal activities and FSC requirements.
It said too that there was evidence that local indigenous communities had no control over forest management on their land in the areas under direct control of the company outside of compartments 4 and 5. The report said this was because of an exclusive contract signed between the community and a company called IWPI. “Due to this exclusive contract some local people are not allowed to perform forest management operations on their own land and it is BCL that is currently harvesting on these indigenous lands. BCL has a harvesting contract with IWPI and the ASI audit team witnessed the fact that BCL machinery and BCL staff [are] performing harvesting operations in this Amerindian reservation,” the report said.
According to ASI, BCL said there is nothing it can do because of the contract, but the communities stated that they have not been paid for the last six months for timber that BCL harvested.
The affected Amerindian village of Akawini is at the moment seeking to break this agreement with IWPI and has sought the ears of the President and the Minister of Amerindian Affairs.
Lalaram said there are signs that Barama will be fully compliant in a very short time. He emphasised that the FSC certification scheme is a voluntary one that is very rigorous with tough hurdles that go far beyond the requirements of the GFC Codes of Practice and national laws related to forestry, environment and safety.
“Barama commits itself to this internationally recognised process not only to gain market access but to ensure and to give assurance to the international public that we are performing best practices in forestry,” he said.
He added that the company was not going to turn back on the FSC programme, whatever the cost. The company has a total of 570,000 hectares certified under the FSC programme, but this is the only portion of concession certified of the company’s total 1.6 million hectares.
“We are going to proceed in stages as we move towards certification of the entire forest,” he said, adding that it will be costly. “But as the biggest player in the sector we have to show leadership by going the way of certification through the FSC,” he said.
