The Canadian Boreal Agreement announced by the Forest Products Association of Canada and 9 ENGOs, led by Greenpeace, is a huge win for the environmental movement. It is also a hopeful sign for a battered forest industry.
The agreement effectively ends the “war in the woods” for the Boreal Forest before it really got going. But this is more than a truce. For the first time, environmentalists have committed to promote the forest industry in global markets, based on its positive environmental performance.
This is a tectonic shift that will shake up all the so-called “stakeholders” - companies, unions, community leaders, and many enviros as well who have grown up with a serious dislike of the forest industry.
For a glimpse of what this means for the industry, check out the FPAC web site and hear what they say about the agreement. Canadian forest products are being rebranded as sustainable and part of climate change solutions. Some will no doubt call it green-wash, and forest companies should not expect immediate redemption for past sins. But the agreement speaks for itself when it defers logging and road building on 29 million hectares, begins work on new eco-system based forest practices and calls for life cycle carbon management of the entire boreal forest.
It is hard not to make the comparison between these environmental commitments and the unmitigated disasters in the Gulf of Mexico. In this case, the industry and the ENGOs are way out in front of provincial government regulators, most of whom are now scrambling to find out what happened.
For Greenpeace and the other major environmental organizations that negotiated this agreement, it is a mark of their maturity and accomplishment. They will change the direction and tactics of a defining campaign begun over 20 years ago. For many in government, industry and unions who said that you can not negotiate with or satisfy ENGOs, this proves them very wrong.
This agreement is also an important win for trade unionists who have understood environmental imperatives and appreciated the need for a division of labour in which environmentalists campaigned against the industry from the outside, sometimes using boycotts and direct action.
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There were periods when explaining environmental campaigns to members required a certain leap of faith, especially when campaign rhetoric overpowered recognition that forest industry jobs can and should be green jobs, processing a renewable resource.
Over the past five years, the Canadian forest industry has lost 100,000 jobs. There is nothing comparable that any other Canadian industry has faced. By all accounts it is an industry needing a new vision and a new start.
What can happen next, leading from this historic agreement? Perhaps a major move towards FSC certification of most of our forest tenures. Consumer choices and building codes may change to favour wood based building products over concrete and plastics. Perhaps there may also be a return to paper recycling operations that have been shelved during the economic crisis, and new investments in environmental niche products like totally chlorine free pulp. With a stronger global market for Canadian producers, just maybe the federal government will begin to support investment and the conversion of our old newsprint industry to higher value specialty products.
In the meantime, the ENGOs are having a party in Toronto to celebrate. Lets wish them well.
We'll see...it will all come out in the greenwash, I'm sure.
Boreal Forest Conflicts Far From Over
Mainstream enviros, timber industry shut First Nations out of "historic" deal
by Dawn Paley
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/3444
But Indigenous peoples have been left out of the agreement, and grassroots environmentalists are concerned that the proposal represents a move towards more corporate control over forests in Canada.
"Name a forest struggle in Canada that hasn't been spearheaded by First Nations from the beginning," said Clayton Thomas-Muller, who is the tar sands campaigner with the Indigenous Environmental Network. ..."I think we have to remember the previous version of this deal, which was the Great Bear Rainforest, and we have to remember how that deal in the end was signed: it was signed not with all the First Nations partners, it was signed behind closed doors, by Tzeporah Berman and company," he said. "And many First Nations felt extremely burned by that."...
"The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement is essentially another huge jump away from democracy, towards corporate control of the lands of Canada, as well as the corporatization of what is left of a once defiant environmental movement," said Macdonald Stainsby, co-ordinator of OilSandsTruth.org.
Although the big environmental groups will drop their "do not buy" and divestment campaigns around Canadian timber, Thomas-Muller thinks the conflicts will continue.
"I hardly think that this in any way represents an end to the conflict between the true proponants of the war over the boreal forest, which of course are corporations and First Nations," he said. "What this means is that First Nations no longer have the support of these mainstream environmental groups that have fallen into the strategy of conquer and divide deployed by industry."
For their part, smaller environmental groups are worried the deal will distract from the ongoing devastation of Canada's forests, and could contribute to more false solutions for climate change.
"Ontario has no legal limit on the size of clearcuts which are permitted to flatten an area equivalent to 1,400 football fields each day in our province," said Amber Ellis, Earthroots Executive Director, in a press release.
"Unless we are to believe that the CBI, David Suzuki Foundation, CPAWS and ForestEthics all under cut their own campaigns, this is only a part and parcel to set up a carbon market, and allow forest offsets to go alongside carbon offsets and further entrench false solutions to the climate crisis," said Stainsby.
See this report from APTN, with a good interview with Clayton Thomas-Muller.
Rabble podcast (Redeye) with Dawn Paley.