FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) is international certifying system, which certifies that forests are managed responsibly. The certification is voluntarily, but the number of companies and institutions that buy only certified wood is growing more and more. Examples for this are IKEA, Kingfisher, L’Oreal, Tetra pack etc.
Currently in Bulgaria there are 116 wood and timber processing companies and 561 000 ha of forest certified by FSC. It turns out that implementation the principles of responsible management weren’t seamlessly followed here because a month ago the group certificate of twelve forestry in South-Central forestry state enterprise (Pazardzhik) were suspended after an audit carried out by international audit company NEPCON.
“The cases in Bulgaria and Romania shows that independent international institutions are often better regulator than the national one” – comments Alexander Dunchev, engineer from the forestry program of WWF. “ – There are many cases, where violations in the forest are shaded by the government, which requires more active control from the non-government organisations, people and international auditors.”
Example for this is the temporary suspend on the group certificate of the twelve forestries from Pazardjik, with 227 549 ha area. The breaches are established by WWF on site and later on checked by the independent audit, including illegal logging, logging in ancient woodlands and also suspension of employee who refuses to conceal them.
“The case with the suspended certificates comes at moment when Bulgaria finalized the process of establishment of National FSC standard for responsible management of the woodlands and applied for approval at FSC headquarters. The standard gives general guidelines for sustainable management of the forests in the whole country and it is an essential tool for achieving balance between the social, economic and ecologic aspects of it.” – comment Neli Doncheva, program manager “Forest” at WWF-Bulgaria.
The system for independent control and check on performance makes the forestry certification by FSC an effective tool for responsible management of the forests and guaranty for the customers that the products from certified wood origin are from well managed forests. The accusations against Shweighofer are that they have accepted illegal logging, while building image of ecologically responsible company. In 2015 Gabriel Paun environmentalist from the Romanian organisation “Green agents” filmed on hidden camera a truck transporting timber sourced from national park in Romania, without documents to the factory of the company. The end of the year WWF lodged a complaint at Federal Bureau of Forestry in Vienna against Shweighofer for violations of EU regulations on timber and urged a full investigation of the allegations.
The Giant “Holzindustrie Schweighofer” lost FSC certificate for illegal logging.
