FSC forest certification: not the better standard

It is not credible that Bunnings have done a synoptic study of the two standards - deciding to accept one and reject the other based upon strength or efficacy. VicForests already have AFS certification (PEFC-accredited) and Bunnings do not have the intellectual grounding to argue it is insufficient – or how another standard is superior. In Bunnings own timber policy, they accept the PEFC standard. That should be the end of it – and be at the limit of their competence to judge. There was, of course, no study. Bunnings were quietly handed their task in an underground carpark with the written media competencies attached.

The notion of the better standard underpins most of the foment of the last 14 years. Activism has centred upon getting clients and specifiers or national timber chains or furniture retailers insisting on FSC because it is the better standard. This single article of faith has remained FSCs sole relevance to timber supply in Australia. A key question arises: Is VicForests denied certification because the standard is better – harder to achieve – or is it denied certification no matter what it does, because activists are the gatekeepers at FSC – pretending to be an independent umpire?

Bunnings suppliers managed FSC forest certification for fragile West Papuan rainforests in a developing nation with greater speed and less palaver than VicForests has with certification for robust eucalypt forests in a first world nation. West Papua has stakeholders who are poor, hungry, denied suffrage and desperate for enterprise at village level. Australia has wealth and power concentrated in urban centres and an educated, privileged, organised, and independent-minded knowledge class. These are differentials that play out in forest certification.

The public still want timber sourced from certified native forests and verifiable at point of purchase. Accordingly, I think forest certification still has an important future role in Australia. For me, this would include both FSC and AFS schemes – since I am not trying to be iconoclastic here. If FSC Australia are properly outed by this VicForests claim, then one positive outcome will be that the strident claims of a better standard by activists will cease to have any potency. Agitprop displays by Bunnings and others will appear even more nonsensical – even to a pliant media.

Something must give on the activist frontline for the public to be fairly treated. The koala-possum-glider-bushfire-linked-to-VicForests media offensive is annoying and misleading – but could be said to be just democracy at work. The present circus at the heart of VicForests certification is the opposite. It is on the Achilles heel of democracy. It seeks to befuddle the public and misdirect the government. At the heart of things, the people need a better media with greater scrutiny to protect and inform them.