Are we ready for "Certified Green" lumber?
There is a movement afoot to "solve" the deforestation problem in the tropical areas of the globe. The idea is to create a centralized certification process, at least in Europe, and to force the purchasers of tropical hardwoods to verify that the wood that they use is certified "green". Sounds like a good idea, and probably the US will jump on the bandwagon soon as well. But, we ask, will this resolve the problem?
We do not think so!
This idea, like so many well intentioned ones that are thought up in ivory towers, far from where the chain saw meets the tree, is not workable. It's just another conscience salving effort on the part of consumers to feel good about something that they WANT to do, even when they know that it is wrong. It is akin to the much touted "solution" to the illegal drug problem of spraying the coca or poppy fields with a chemical defoliant. Reducing supply has never eliminated demand, it just raises prices, and in the case of drugs makes the user go to even greater lengths to feed his habit.
Now, let's look at some of the drawbacks to the solutions for deforestation being proposed:
1. Maintaining "On Site" Inspections
Keeping inspectors in the field will cost a great deal of money. Local governments rarely can dispose of the amounts involved (even when they want to!). Inspectors require transportation: in most cases these areas are reachable only by water or seasonal roads, sometimes only by air! Boats, 4x4s and airplanes are, in most of the places of the world where tropical hardwood grows, very expensive toys for the rich, not work tools for relatively low level government employees.
of its original and damaging colonial extractive cycles, the sugarcane plantation, which devastated the most important forest on the continent, taking away species that will never be seen again, plants that may well not be used again. Looking at the economic aspect, a few "families" are again to be benefited with the profits of exports, forgetting the large majority of the population which was kept marginalized, exploited and under employed.
