Hannes Mäntyranta The author works as communications coordinator in Finnish Forest Association and as editor-in-chief of forest.fi website

The statement was not questioned in the article in any way, and it was published by several Finnish media with no modifications.

Finnish forest industry companies importing timber from Russia were only able to comment on the news the day after it had been published. The comments made it clear that the estimate given by WWF was based on the assumption that the share of illegal timber of all timber exported is the same as the share of illegal timber of all timber harvested in Russia.

However, no illegal timber is imported to Finland. This is safeguarded by the systems of origin set up by the forest industry companies in order to track the origin of imported wood.

The systems were set up for several reasons, one being the demand voiced by the environmental organizations, such as WWF. The systems are certified according to ISO and EMAS, and no one has been able to show that they are deficient in any way.

In addition, WWF Germany, which is responsible for the Illegal wood for the European market report, is aware of these systems. This leads to the question: Why did WWF Germany not take these systems into account in its report?

What is the point of companies assuming any social or environmental responsibility, if the results are only disdained by the stakeholders who originally demanded it?

The tracking systems are FSC certified
To give an example, Russian environmental organizations have widely praised the Finnish companies’ wood origin systems. WWF Germany also considers them important, but in the report they are disregarded because “so far they have not been quantitatively evaluated.”

I asked the authors of the report what this actually means. Might this mean an estimate of the amount of illegal timber that the systems do not catch? But if the amount is zero, does this mean that a quantitative estimate is not possible?

In other words, if the systems work properly, a quantitative analysis cannot be done and WWF cannot accept the systems for the very reason that they work as they should.

Of the several authors of the report, only Mr. Peter Hirschberger, a consultant, replied to my query. According to him, the share of illegal timber has not been evaluated on site, which means that it is not possible to say how well the systems actually function.

This is definitely untrue: since the systems are certified according to ISO and EMAS, on-site conditions have certainly also been assessed.

However, the most interesting point is this: the Finnish companies’ systems of tracking the origin of wood in Russia are also certified according to the Forest Stewardship Council, a forest certification system supported by WWF itself. This leads us to a fundamental question: Does WWF not trust the FSC, despite being one of the founding members of the system?

False claims by Greenpeace used as support
The WWF Germany report does say that in themselves the systems of origin are good, but it only demands that they should be used by Nordic companies. It criticizes the Swedish companies for “seemingly doing virtually nothing to improve” their ability to separate legal timber from illegal in Russia.

The next paragraph directs the same criticism against Finland: “According to other reports the situation in Finland might be similar.”

The source referred to here is the Partners in Crime report published by Greenpeace in 2006. It has, however, been proven as false, partly by, for example, FSC-accredited auditors. There is only one exception: the only law-breakers were the Russian environmental authorities, who carried out no environmental impact assessments although they were required by Russian legislation at that time.

But who is to say, on the basis of this, that the loggings have been illegal? Who gets to determine what Russian legislation actually means: foreign companies, Russian authorities, or Greenpeace?

If you ask Greenpeace, the answer is, of course, obvious. This internationally led organization considers that it has a better right than the National Board of Antiquities in Finland to determine, for example, which of the Finnish national heritage sites should be preserved and how, judging by its comments on several disputes in Finland.

If this is not cultural imperialism, then what is?

Authors deny their responsibility
In reading the report, one cannot avoid the feeling that the aim has been to inflate the problems as far as possible and to find those guilty in a pre-determined direction. To take an example: the sources used were mostly published at the beginning of the 2000’s, despite the availability of much more recent information.

The report’s list of references appears adequate, but on looking them up one finds that a significant number of them are only statements by environmental organizations, such as WWF itself.

The source quoted in evaluating the share of illegal harvesting in Russian Far East is the World Bank, which sets the figure at 10–15 percent. However, concerning North-West Russia the World Bank’s evaluation is not acceptable. Instead, with remarkable precision, the report gives the much higher figure 27 percent.

The source of this figure is a press release by another environmental organization – which WWF is a member of: the Taiga Rescue Network. The press release mentions no sources at all, but it is more or less common knowledge that the figure 27 percent was previously estimated by – WWF (see, for example, here).

I wanted to ask the authors to comment on the sources and how they had been chosen. This proved not to be possible.

Hirschberger wrote in his reply that any additional questions should be addressed to WWF Finland. However, WWF Finland is in no way responsible for the report – quite the opposite, in fact: during the preparation of the report WWF Finland repeatedly pointed out its deficiencies to WWF Germany and demanded that they should be corrected.

In view of this it seems fair to say that the authors exhibit a singular lack of willingness to stand behind their words, despite being named in the report.



Illegal wood for the European market report, 4.31 MB