FSC finally admits it: ‘Concession overlaps areas inhabited by indigenous people’
Timber certifier says controversial logging concession in Peru's Amazon overlaps indigenous land
Talk about slow progress. After almost 15 years of certifying a highly controversial industrial-scale logging concession in the remote south-east Peruvian Amazon, and after issuing all kinds of various statements over the last few years following a fatal encounter in that concession leading to the death of one logger and increasing media attention and criticism by NGOs, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has finally come out and said publicly what so many others have known all along: that concession includes indigenous peoples’ territory.
Congratulations, FSC!
In a statement issued on 23 May announcing that it would continue to suspend the certification of the company running the concession, Maderera Canales Tahuamanu (MCT), FSC acknowledged that it “partially overlaps with forest areas inhabited by IPVI [indigenous people living in voluntary isolation].”
It seems to have taken the FSC a bizarrely long time to understand - or at least publicly acknowledge - this. For example, in July 2024, a statement on its website described MCT as merely “operating in areas linked to [my italics] the Mashco Piro territory” and its concession being “adjacent to [my italics again] the territorial reserve Madre de Dios where the Mashco Piro reside”, but for whatever reason it couldn’t quite bring itself to say the concession is actually part of the Mashco-Piro’s territory.
Nor did the FSC make clear that, as a result of that overlap, the concession lies in an area where it was agreed years ago by the Ministry of Culture, indigenous federations and other civil society organisations that the reserve for the Mashco-Piro should be expanded.
There was something similar the year before too. In December 2023 the FSC issued a statement claiming they “did not find evidence that the Mashco Piro. . . are present there” in MCT’s concession - despite the fatal encounter, in 2022 - and that the Mashco Piro’s territory is simply “adjacent.” There’s that word again - adjacent. The previous month, in an interview with me, the now ex-FSC International Director General Kim Carstensen put it another way: the concession is “bordering [my italics] on the territory of a people living in voluntary isolation”, rather than actually including it.
“You give the impression of not understanding the situation by referring to the “certified area bordering on the territory of a people living in voluntary isolation,” I replied to Carstensen. “But it’s not “bordering on” their territory: a huge chunk of the area is part of their territory! At the eastern extremities, sure, but nevertheless still part of it.”
Despite this admission, the FSC still hasn’t done the obvious thing and terminated MCT’s certification - instead extending its suspension until November. That decision appears to be justified by the limp claim that the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) “cannot be applied in the context of IPVIs due to their right and decision to remain uncontacted”, which apparently constitutes a “gap in FSC’s current normative framework that we are actively working to bridge.”
Another way of saying that: blahblahblah. Sounds to me like the FSC is just playing for more time.