PEFC certifie l'incertifiable

Dear Sir/Madam



Thank you very much for you email voicing your concern about forest practices in Tasmania and asking PEFC to annul a certification based on the slides you have seen from Amis de la Terre.

The PEFC Council takes very seriously every complaint about forests certified to schemes endorsed by the PEFC Council.

There are a series of mechanisms in place for dealing with complaints and concerns which will need to be followed. Firstly it is vital to establish precisely which forest it is that the Amis de la Terre is concerned about, whether it is indeed certified and what the exact details of the complaint. This is normally undertaken using the certification body's official complaints procedure. I attach a copy of a letter from the Chairman of the PEFC Council which was sent the Wilderness Society and copied to Amis de la Terre.

PEFC has met with and is in correspondence with both the Wilderness Society and Amis de la Terre, as you can see from the letter of Mr Henri Plauche Gillon below. It is regrettable, therefore, that Amis de la Terre has chosen to start a campaign before the complaint has even been investigated.

Nevertheless we have copied the complaint to the National Accreditation Body of Australia, JAS-ANZ (the equivalent in France is COFRAC), and also the standard setter. We have asked "The Wilderness Society" to forward additional information to JAS-ANZ and the standard setter to allow them to investigate the matter. We have also asked the Wilderness society to use the official complaints procedure of the certification body so a report addressing the complaint can be produced.

As Forestry Tasmania has been mentioned in the text of the letter, we have copied the complaint directly to them as well. They have responded by indicating a web site which addresses issues raised in a recent DVD by the Wilderness Society. This can be found on www.forestrytas.com. Forestry Tasmania particularly referred to the following documents:

http://www.forestrytas.com.au/forestrytas/pdf_files/sfm_brochure.pdf

http://www.forestrytas.com.au/forestrytas/pdf_files/sfm_2005_web.pdf

http://www.forestrytas.com.au/forestrytas/pdf_files/new_silviculture_for_oldgrowth.pdf

We will continue our dialogue with both the Wilderness Society and Amis de la Terre and trust that a constructive dialogue will allow the issues to be properly identified and addressed.

The PEFC Council thanks you again for you email of concern and wants to assure you that it has informed all the relevant actors of the complaint and is now waiting for responses from the official complaints procedures before it will decide how to take the matter forward.



Yours sincerely





Ben Gunneberg

Secretary General PEFC Council





(Correspondence with The Wilderness Society and Amis de la Terre)



The Wilderness Society Incorporated

National Campaign Office

Mr Sean Cadman

1st Floor Baileys Corner, 143 London Circuit

Canberra City, ACT PO Box 188

Civic Square, ACT 2608

AUSTRALIA



Luxembourg, 20 October 2006



Dear Mr. Cadman

Thank you for meeting with me in Paris and for your follow-up letter in which you raised concerns about the forest practices in a forest you say is certified to the AFS Limited standard in Tasmania. I assure that the PEFC Council takes all complaints about compliance with forest certification requirements very seriously.

PEFC has an open and transparent system for the development, assessment, endorsement and governance of forest certification systems around the world. The structures guarantee the independence and separate roles of developing, assessing and controlling institutions. Regular assessment and revisions demonstrate and underline PEFC's commitment to the principles of continuous multi-stakeholder participation and improvement. A central and elementary part of these procedures is the structured system of complaint procedures, which any stakeholder with a grievance can and should make use of. These dispute and complaint procedures assure that the responsible institutions are made aware of complaints and can act accordingly to address them.

Therefore in order to investigate the matter thoroughly, it is essential that you raise your concerns about the forest in question directly with the certifier through the certifier’s official complaints procedure. It is important to establish whether the forest in question:

1) Has indeed been certified to the ASF Limited standard,

2) And if so, is in compliance or otherwise with the standard.

In addition we will forward the documentation you have already sent us directly to AFS Limited in Australia and also the name of the forest and its certifier once you have supplied this to us, as well as to the certifier’s Accreditation Body (JAS-ANZ) so they are kept fully informed.

Yours sincerely





Henri Plauche Gillon

PEFC Council Chairman



cc: Australian Forestry Standard AFS

JAS – ANZ, Australia

Sylvain Angerand, Amis de la Terre

Vous avez reçu il y a quelques jours la réaction de PEFC.

Vous trouverez sur ce lien la réponse de nos partenaires :
http://www.amisdelaterre.org/article.php3?id_article=2921. En résumé, nous
constatons que PEFC ne dément pas les pratiques que nous dénonçons mais en
atténue la portée et les conséquences.

Nous invitons chacun à se faire son idée en analysant les 2 réponses et en
lisant le rapport « Certifying the incredible » de nos collègues australiens
(téléchargeable sur notre site :
http://www.amisdelaterre.org/article.php3?id_article=2919
<http> ). Pour
plus d¹info sur la situation en Tasmanie :
http://www.wilderness.org.au/regions/tas

PEFC doit maintenant répondre très clairement à la question suivante : les
méthodes de coupe rase en forêt primaire, d¹incendie au napalm et de
conversion en plantation sont-elles des méthodes de gestion durable qui
méritent d¹être « écocertifiées » ? PEFC doit alors suspendre la
certification des bois venant de Tasmanie tant que ces méthodes sont
pratiquées pour ne pas induire le consommateur en erreur.
Sylvain Angerand
Chargé de campagne Forêt des Amis de la Terre