Amazon logging firm suspended by FSC over indigenous rights scandal
Announcement by Forest Stewardship Council after worldwide media coverage and public outcry
So much has been written about the indigenous “Mashco-Piro” in the remote Peruvian Amazon in recent weeks - some of it accurate, some misleading, some outright garbage. Reports of the “discovery of a never-seen-before tribe”, or that the Mashco-Piro “could be the last human group outside civilisation”, are beyond preposterous, while the BBC’s claim they live in “total isolation”, or CNN’s assertion they’ve been “rarely seen before”, or Spanish newspaper El Mundo’s statement that they’ve lived in “isolation from other civilisations for centuries”, are all way-off-the-mark.
But this is certainly true: the Mashco-Piro, one of 20+ indigenous peoples living in “isolation” in Peru, find themselves at immense risk from logging companies, and one of those is Maderera Canales Tahuamanu (MCT). Worse, as Reuters, CNN and National Geographic - but not The Washington Post - have acknowledged recently, that firm’s operations have been certified by the Germany-headquartered Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which supposedly ensures that timber has been produced sustainably and ethically while respecting indigenous peoples’s rights. To date, almost 15,000 people have emailed the FSC, through the NGO Survival International’s website, urging it to stop certifying MCT, while 100s of others have done the same through “social media” - for want of a better word - and FSC publications.
Last week, on 30 August, the FSC announced the “provisional suspension of MCT’s certification”, beginning on 13 September and effective for eight months. This will apparently give the FSC time to “commission Assurance Services International (ASI) to undertake a thorough investigation. . . in accordance with international, regional, and national laws.”
“Additionally, FSC representatives will visit Peru to meet with government officials, local stakeholders, and Indigenous Peoples' organizations to engage in dialogue, understand the land classification issues in the country, and ensure that our actions are informed by on-the-ground realities,” the FSC’s statement reads. “To further strengthen our approach, FSC will seek guidance from relevant UN bodies and other intergovernmental organizations on best practices for upholding the rights of Indigenous Peoples living in voluntary isolation.”
According to what the FSC’s Director General Kim Carstensen told indigenous federations AIDESEP and FENAMAD the day before it issued that statement, an FSC delegation will travel to Peru in November, while the investigation will be carried out by “Accreditation Services International.” The fact that the Director General can’t even get right the name of the company that the FSC will be using speaks volumes.
In response to this announcement, three questions immediately come to mind:
1) What took the FSC so long?
2) Why didn’t it attempt to “understand the land classification issues” and “on-the-ground realities” in Peru - or to seek UN advice - before certifying MCT more than a decade ago?
3) Is this merely a public relations gambit intended to mollify critics, with no genuine possibility of decertifying MCT in the longer-term? The key facts are so obvious - the decades-long documented use of what is now MCT’s concession by the Mashco-Piro, the proposal to include those areas in an intangible reserve in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the decision to permit MCT to operate there instead - that the apparent need for another eight months to “investigate” seems bizarre.
Indeed, there are all kinds of things about this that are bizarre. One - which I haven’t highlighted before - is the way the FSC-accredited companies that write the certifying reports and annual audits have, over the years, so spectacularly failed to mention the Mashco-Piro by name. Not once do they do so. Not even in the 2011 certifying report, by the US-based Rainforest Alliance, which included a paragraph on the reserve established for them but referred only to an “indigenous population, possibly Yora and Amahuaca”, and somehow not the group who are by far the most populous and most well-known.
Obviously, “Mashco-Piro” is not what they call themselves, but it is the most commonly-used name for them in Peru - by the government as well as AIDESEP and FENAMAD, which have been fighting for their rights for decades. They are, it is worth emphasising, particularly in light of some of the recent sensationalist media coverage, the most photographed, most filmed of all the indigenous people in “isolation” in Peru - and probably the entire Amazon.
Sometimes, as the image above demonstrates, the Mashco-Piro have even been photographed by camera trap. That photo, among others, was taken in late 2019 at the Alto Purus National Park control post on the River Tahuamanu right on the edge of MCT’s concession that was subsequently abandoned because of the number of times the Mashco-Piro turned up there and the risks it posed both to them and the park guards based there. It is further proof - not that any should be needed - that the Mashco-Piro inhabit that forest, and yet another reason why the FSC should decertify MCT once and for all.
Over the last few years the “world’s leading ethical wood label”, as one NGO has dubbed the FSC, has given the impression of simply not grasping that the reserve established for the Mashco-Piro et al back in 2002 wasn’t big enough. There was yet another deadly reminder of that the day before the FSC announced MCT’s suspension when a violent encounter between people in “isolation” and workers in another concession exploiting Brazil nuts as well as several tree species was reported, leaving at least two of the forest workers dead, one injured and another two their whereabouts unknown.
The upshot of all this is clear. Peru’s government must urgently do what AIDESEP and FENAMAD have been urging for more than two decades: expand the reserve eastwards and ban all logging companies - not just MCT - from operating there. Do that and the FSC becomes irrelevant anyway.