The ‘world’s leading ethical wood label’ should hang its head in shame
Forest Stewardship Council’s response to events in Peru shows appalling disregard for indigenous rights
In some ways it is fascinating, in other ways utterly banal: just over a minute’s footage of a few dozen indigenous people, all male, none wearing “clothes”, one or two carrying spears, some of them gesticulating and shouting, as they move right-to-left across a huge beach that has formed out of the bend of a river in the dry season. Only these aren’t just any indigenous people: they are the “Mashco-Piro”, as they’re most commonly-known, by far the most populous of 20+ indigenous peoples living in “isolation” in the remotest parts of the Peruvian Amazon.
Evidence suggests that over 100 years ago, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Mashco-Piro suffered all manner of atrocities during the so-called “Rubber Boom”, when 1000s of people descended on the western Amazon in a bid to source wild rubber to supply the booming car and bicycle industries in Europe and the US. Those who survived retreated deeper into the forest, abandoning settled communities and agriculture, and have lived there in isolation, more or less, ever since.
In recent decades the threats - particularly to the Mashco-Piro captured in that footage as well as in various photos, released by the NGO Survival International in mid-July - have been somewhat different. Not so much rubber, but oil and gas companies, including the US’s Mobil in the 1990s and a Chinese state-owned firm in the 2000s, evangelical Christian missionaries, cocaine traffickers and, particularly today, loggers.
Almost 20 years ago, bizarre as it might seem, the indigenous Yine living in the village, Monte Salvado, on the opposite bank of the river invited me to play volleyball on that beach featuring in the recently-released images. Later that morning, I stamped around the sand with three Yine men and heard how the Mashco-Piro, or “Mashco-Yines” as one Yine called them, had made an especially dramatic appearance there six years previously in 2000. According to that man, Teodoro Sebastian, some “200 Mashco-Yines” had turned up: men, women and children.
Survival didn’t make those images public because the Mashco-Piro appearing at Monte Salvado is unusual - it isn’t, they’ve been doing it for years, particularly in the dry season - but because they wanted to draw further attention to their existence and increase pressure on the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) to stop certifying two logging concessions, located along another river to the north of Monte Salvado, that include Mashco-Piro territory and pose immense risks to them. Despite years of lobbying, especially from indigenous federations and more recently Survival, which has encouraged 1000s of people to write to the FSC, the concessions remain certified.
The FSC’s response to the new images, which garnered considerable media attention, was beyond pathetic. In a statement posted on its website, the organisation insisted that its “mission is grounded in unwavering respect for Indigenous Peoples”, that its “priority is to ensure that the rights of the Mashco Piro and all indigenous peoples are fully respected and protected by organisations certified by FSC”, and that it will “conduct a comprehensive review” of the Mashco-Piro’s case.
Perhaps what is most disingenuous about that statement is the FSC’s failure, once again, to acknowledge the key, substantive issue. It is not that the company operating the concessions, Maderera Canales Tahuamanu (MCT), hasn’t received government permission to do so - no one is saying that - and nor is it that those concessions aren’t adjacent to a reserve intended to protect the Mashco-Piro and other indigenous people in “isolation” - no one is saying that either. But what is most significant is that when the reserve was established, in April 2002, it was nowhere near as big as had been formally proposed by regional indigenous federation FENAMAD, and that some of the forest that should have been included because it is part of the Mashco-Piro’s territory was carved up into logging concessions instead.
In other words, the Mashco-Piro - who obviously are not aware of the reserve’s existence nor would understand the concept even if they were - don’t merely “reside” in the reserve, the term the FSC uses. Their territory extends beyond it too, to the north, south, east and the west, as has been recognised for decades, not just by FENAMAD but many other civil society organisations and individuals.
Not only that, but the Peruvian state itself has explicitly recognised that Mashco-Piro territory is not just confined to the reserve - because in November 2016 the cross-sector commission responsible for reserves for indigenous people in “isolation” agreed to expand it eastwards. That would mean some of those previously excluded areas, such as MCT’s concessions, are included in the reserve after all - if and when the President signs a Supreme Decree.
Despite all this, though, the FSC can’t seem to bring itself to accept that those two concessions that it has been certifying for so long fall within indigenous land. “Somehow the FSC has come to this ludicrous conclusion,” I wrote in an article last year, “despite the tragic incident [in 2022 when one MCT worker was killed and another gravely wounded after an encounter with the Mashco-Piro], despite all the evidence collected for more than 20 years by indigenous federations that the Mashco-Piro live in that forest, despite the likes of the WWF and countless other NGOs and researchers agreeing, despite the FSC’s own certifying bodies doing likewise, and despite Peru’s Ministry of Culture and Multi-Sector Commission accepting it as well and approving the expansion of the reserve eastwards.”
The FSC’s response to the Survival images was swiftly condemned by FENAMAD, national indigenous federation AIDESEP and the pan-Amazon organisation COICA, which warned of the Mashco-Piro’s possible “extinction” and urged the FSC to stop certifying MCT immediately. Indeed, just 10 days later, according to FENAMAD, there was a violent encounter between the Mashco-Piro and illegal loggers in a former logging concession south of Monte Salvado, in another area, similar to MCT’s, which in 2016 the cross-sector commission agreed should be included in the expanded reserve too. The timing could hardly be more dramatic and it is almost as if the Mashco-Piro were trying to make a point to the FSC: We do not only live in the reserve!
In late 2022 the FSC’s International Director General Kim Carstensen admitted in an in-depth interview with me the tragic incident that year when one MCT worker was killed was a “strong indication that something has gone seriously wrong” with their certification process. Yet as of today, which just so happens to be the United Nations International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, some 21 months later, the company remains certified. The FSC, described by one NGO as “the world’s leading ethical wood label”, should hang its head in shame.