MOT participated in an international investigation that reveals shortcomings in the control of forest use. You can test yourself in the story, Can you evaluate what, for example, has resulted from illegal logging?
Forests are being felled at an accelerating pace in Finland and around the world.
Yle’s MOT delivery has worked out together with an international network of suppliers how to control the use of wood.
To complement the laws, two voluntary, market-oriented forest certificates have been established. In Finland, they include most of the commercial forests.
The largest forest certificates PEFC promise buyers of wood products that forests are managed sustainably and that valuable natural sites are not destroyed.
Based on MOT’s report, there are also gaps in the supervision of forest certificates in Finland.
Even court judgments go unnoticed. Violations of the rules of certificates are often dealt with internally, and the results of the inspections are not published. Problems revealed in public reports may not be mentioned at all.
The Deforestation Inc. project, led by the journalist network ICIJ, found companies around the world that have maintained their certification despite the serious environmental problems associated with the companies.
The international PEFC organization considers the findings to be isolated cases.
In Finland, too, we are reminded that, in relation to logging, very few violations are reported.
Yle’s MOT department investigated the control of forest use by going through the information provided to the environmental authorities, the audit reports of the supervisors, as well as court judgments and investigation requests made to the police.
Illegal logging does not always have to be made public
In Finland, forest crimes very rarely result in a conviction.
A forestry crime is only punishable if a forest protected by law has been destroyed intentionally or due to gross negligence.
In MOT’s report, several examples emerged where the prosecutor or the police stopped the investigation when the perpetrator said that he had caused the damage.
According to the rules of the PEFC certificate, the destruction of a forest protected by law must be mentioned as a violation of the law in supervision only if it becomes a judgment from the district court.
MOT’s report found six judgments from 2019–2022 and one decision related to unauthorized drainage by the regional administrative agency. In all of them, the forest protected by the certificate has been treated illegally.
Only one of these judgments is mentioned in public certificate control reports.
There are hardly any serious deviations
The basic idea of \u200b\u200bforest certificates is clear. The sellers of the forest and the industry that buys the wood undertake to follow the criteria of sustainable forest management that they define themselves. If they are violated, there will be consequences.
If this happens repeatedly and systematically, the result is a serious deviation from the certificate criteria. It can lead to the loss of the certificate.
In the public reports of PEFC auditors, the same small violations are repeated year after year, which go against the core of the responsibility promise.
Slight deviations, i.e. faults, have been noticed year after year in water protection and protection strips of water bodies, in leaving saving trees for birds and insects, and in making statutory forest use notifications.
Even so, repeated neglects are not considered serious violations of the certificate, i.e. deviations.
It is due to the scope of the monitored areas. Few violations are revealed, and they are compared to the large number of fellings during supervision.
Auditing is based on sampling. Audit visits cannot cover the entire area, and official supervision is not comprehensive either.
The buyer of the wood is always responsible
MOT’s investigation found problems with the logging of all large companies.
A mitigating factor in the case is the fact that the company itself brought the suspicion of felling of protected forests to the attention of Metsäkeskus.
Stora’s FSC certificate is audited by DNV Business Assurance. According to it, the judgment does not need to be reported as an anomaly.
A MetsäGroup employee was fined a couple of years ago for cutting down a forest protected by law. Through the FSC certificate, the company is committed to ensuring that it does not use illegally cut wood.
The verdict did not go unnoticed by the company’s auditor. Pitkänen-Arte estimates that in the future they will be recorded a slight deviation or the attention of the auditor.
Is the felling of small, but protected by law due to biodiversity, meaningless when compared to the total amount of felling?
– None of the names mean that they are unimportant, but they are not directly written as a serious deviation in the audits, Pitkänen-Arte says.
Pitkänen-Arte says that the PECF group certification, which covers almost all commercial forests in Finland, and the three committees that manage it, are significant for the forestry sector.
– There is an atmosphere of openness in those committees, we dare to bring up our mistakes quite openly in an atmosphere of trust. It is a big strength within PEFC.
– Of course, it is another matter that the certification system defines how much information is shared in public. There, in the certification committee in PEFC, issues are discussed much more openly than what is recorded in these audit reports.
In particular, the PEFC certificate has been criticized for the fact that the forest owners, i.e. MTK and the industry, monitor themselves in it.
Control has been deliberately made more difficult
Monitoring of forest certificates is carried out by auditing companies.
A supervised company, for example a forest company or a forest owner, tenders audit companies.
In Finland and in the Finnish language, there are few auditors supervising PEFC forest certification. That’s why the same people supervise the forest and industry year after year.
This is a problem for independence. It is also difficult to assess the reliability of the auditors’ work, as the auditors only publish summaries of the results of their supervision.
Auditing is also completely based on what the industry itself defines the criteria for certificates to be.
In the 21st century, several criteria have been weakened. Timo Soininen from the auditing company Kiwa Inspecta says that he has been doing forest certification since the 90s.
– Then the auditor was able to determine that the law has now been broken. Then those who drew up the standards started to consider that there must be at least a district court or someone else.
Illegal logging and prohibited teak
40 international media from 27 countries studied global forest certificates since autumn.
The supplier network ICIJ, where the company had violated environmental regulations, even though it had committed to a global responsibility certificate.
Wood is imported into Central Europe from companies accused of illegal logging in Romania via Italy and Poland.
The journalist network ICIJ examined official reports and court documents concerning companies in at least 50 countries.
Kim Carstensen, head of the international organization FCS (Forest Stewardship Council), responded to the criticism in an interview with ICIJ and the German Broadcasting Corporation. According to him, the organization intervenes in abuses as soon as they are identified.
– We are a good brand in many ways. However, we do not claim that a voluntary certificate alone can solve multi-layered problems such as deforestation.
– In a perfect world, governments would bear a greater responsibility for the protection of forests, says Carstensen.
The international PEFC organization answered the supplier network’s questions in writing.
– The reliability of PEFC and other certificates has been evaluated numerous times, writes communications manager Thorsten Arndt.
MOT discusses the sustainable management of forests in its documentary The Story of the Destroyed Forest.
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