Greenwashing Goes Wild in Canada

With its vast expanses of forest, Canada has the most “certified” sustainable timber operations of any nation, according to the nonprofit organizations that attest to the environmental soundness of logging practices.

 

Such forestry-standards groups were born in the 1990s out of rage over tropical rainforest destruction. Today, they put their leafy seals of approval on toilet paper, two-by-fours and other wood and paper goods to assure eco-conscious consumers and investors they were responsibly produced.

 

Yet research shows Canadian forests have seen some of the world’s largest declines in ecologically critical primary and old-growth woodlands over the last two decades, even as sustainability-certification programs grew to include nearly all of Canada’s logging.

 

To track destruction of older woodlands in these certified zones, Reuters analyzed forestry data in Ontario, a major logging province. The analysis found that about 30 percent of the certified boreal forests (or taiga) harvested from 2016 to 2020 were at least 100 years old. That resulted in the loss of 377 square miles of these older forests, an area the size of New York City and Washington DC combined, the analysis found. Canada’s forests – accounting for 9 percent of the world’s total – are considered critical to containing global warming. Environmental advocates have long pushed to end logging in primary or old-growth forests, which soak up far more climate-damaging carbon than logged-and-replanted areas. 

 

Primary forests are those that show no sign of previous harvesting. They can include old-growth areas – some with trees hundreds or thousands of years old – but also relatively newer woodlands that, for instance, might have regrown after wildfires.

 

Forest-certification nonprofits have chosen to allow logging of older forests through a host of concessions to industry. The harvesting of such areas in Ontario came despite the fact that 94 percent of the province’s managed forests are certified by one of the two dominant environmental-certification organizations in Canada, the analysis found. 

 

[FYI, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the world’s first such certification organization, founded in 1993 with environmentalist support; and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), a rival founded by a timber and forest-products trade group the following year, certify logging companies’ practices in specific forests and examine consumer-product supply chains. Their seals of approval – a tree with a checkmark for the FSC and a leaf insignia for SFI – have become essential to timber and forest-products firms amid rising pressure for environmental stewardship].

 

Reuters analyzed satellite-derived logging data, government forest-age estimates and forest-certification maps to estimate the harvest of forests at least 100 years old in Ontario’s certified zones.

 

“Why the heck are they allowing logging – certified logging – in primary forests that are over 100 years old?” questioned Dominick DellaSala (right), a conservation biologist with environmental group Wild Heritage who studies Canadian logging impacts. “For Canada to claim that it’s doing sustainable management, it’s laughable. To put a certification seal of approval on it is more alarming”.

 

For sure, the rapid loss of older Canadian forests highlights the flaws of certification programs that have come under heavy influence of the logging and forest-products industries. A scam.