The Germans have a long word for it, ‘schadenfreude’, taking pleasure in another’s misfortune. And it is tempting to indulge yourself in this direction when the person or organisation afflicted is not your cup of tea. So there must have been a few people at the Forest Leadership Forum in Atlanta rubbing their hands at signs of what our correspondent calls ‘cracks in the façade’ of the Forest Stewardship Council.
The FSC has sometimes rubbed the industry up the wrong way. There’s a perception in certain quarters that it is too heavily weighted towards the greens. And for some its apparent reluctance to talk mutual recognition with other certification or accreditation schemes smacks rigidity.
But like it or not, the FSC system is one of the biggest games in town. So it’s vital the other schemes continue to make overtures and seek a meeting of minds. The only beneficiaries of confrontation will be rival industries using materials that can’t hold a candle to wood’s environmental credentials.
That said, the alternatives to the FSC needn’t seek talks cap in hand. As our Atlanta report highlights, in the US the Sustainable Forestry Initiative continues to make good headway in terms of forest accreditation and consumer awareness. The Pan European Forest Certification scheme is also advancing across the Continent. Adding power to their elbows is the fact that retailers and governments, including the UK’s, now accept the validity of other schemes, even if they initially favoured the FSC.
And the argument that we need an all-embracing certification scheme because poor old consumers will be confused by having more than one brand as proof of ‘greenness’ doesn’t hold water. If we could handle the switch from Marathon to Snickers, or, less tritely, simultaneous use of the BSI kitemark, DIN numbers and CEN labels, we won’t go into a spin over having a handful of eco-labels.
