FSC International and Tasmania: Irreconcilable Issues and Values

In the debate in the Legislative Council about the Tasmanian Forestry Agreement (TFA) it has become apparent that some MLCs are trying to “sell” the idea that FSC accreditation will be a formality if the legislation is passed. This has been stated by Labor MLC Craig Farrell last week and he was speaking under instructions from the Giddings-McKim government. Farrell and the rest of the Labor-Green government might well believe this to be true, not because they believe in an honest triple-bottom line process which FSC is designed to be, but because they think they can manipulate the process and corrupt it in Tasmania.

The evidence is building that this is the tactic.

Jared Diamond, in his ground-breaking 2005 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, has a small seven or eight-page section on the creation and development of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in the early 1990s, and its progress over the next decade or so, to 2003-4. He concludes that: “The effectiveness of the Forest Stewardship Council has received the ultimate compliment from logging companies opposed to it: they have set up their own competing certification organizations with weaker standards… It remains to be seen whether, in the future, these competing industry attempts at self-certification will be outcompeted by the FSC through losing credibility in the eyes of consumers, or will instead converge on FSC standards in order to gain credibility”.

We know how this scenario has played out in Tasmania since Diamond published Collapse. In 2005 the whole Tasmanian forestry industry, with the exception of Tasmanian Workers For Forests (TWFF), but including all the corporate heavyweights such as Gunns and the pro-Gunns business community and the political classes, Labor-Liberal-independent, were dead-set opposed to FSC. They saw FSC as a massive threat to forestry management practices across the board. In opposition to FSC, as elsewhere, the Australian forestry industry created its own internal standards, spruiked as “world’s best practice”, and still spruiked as such in Tasmania, albeit with diminishing enthusiasm. When the marketplace rejected this self-certification, as happened with the London Olympic Games refusing to use Tasmanian timber, the automatic response was that “extremists” undermined Tasmania’s place in the market.

The reality is that the UK joined the FSC system well before the Olympic Games and was applying standards that they had already agreed to. Tasmanian practices and policies did not meet those standards. The UK decision should have served as a wake-up call to Tasmania, but the opposite was the case. The Tasmanian industry and its political puppets chose to ignore the reality that a growing number of countries worldwide were increasingly sourcing timber with the FSC badge. They thought that the Japanese would continue to ignore FSC standards into the indefinite future.

It has only been in the past few years that consumer sentiment in Japan has shifted to the point where FSC certification has become the required standard. It is easy to remember the last trip that Premier David Bartlett made to Japan on behalf of Gunns. His large and brash statement on the Hobart airport tarmac when he returned that it was “all the way with Gunns to be granted FSC certification” – or words to that effect – showed that the penny had finally dropped about how blind the Tasmanian industry was to what was happening in its main market.

But also embedded in Bartlett’s public statements was the view that FSC certification could be selected as a commodity, picked off a shelf and put on like a lycra bike outfit with brand labels back and front. Inadvertently, Bartlett articulated the main issue confronting FSC International in establishing an effective and honest FSC organisation in Tasmania. The issue is the prevailing political culture in Tasmania of seeing everything through the prism of tactical manipulation, of seeking ways and means to manipulate processes and procedures to achieve the “right” outcome. The Tasmanian political culture places high value on the capacity to work around checks and balances, to manipulate due process, to break hard-won conventions without seeming to and to put career and personal position within the party system above the public interest. Those who play these tactical games well are held in high esteem by their peers.

This is the context in which a number of well-intentioned people over the years since FSC International was established have sought to have the accreditation system used in Tasmania, basically to establish transparency, fairness and inclusion in the decision-making processes, and eliminate corruption, exploitation and environmental degradation.

In Tasmania in 2013 the questions asked by Jared Diamond nearly a decade ago have been given a new twist, a twist which could wreck the credibility of FSC International if they choose not to pay attention.

Since the unexpected “bad news” from Japan that FSC was the preferred standard, plus the further bad news that prospective joint venture partners for Gunns were deterred from investing partly for the same reason – lack of FSC accreditation – lots has happened, most of it focusing on the wrong things, and following the same old patterned behaviours of secrecy, destruction of due process, tactical manoeuvring for personal and party (including vested organisation) interest, and as always, putting the corporate interest at the top of the heap.

That’s been the story since 2009 and it continues to be the story.

Well, not quite. Since the establishment of the Legislative Council committee to have a look at the Tasmanian Forestry Agreement (TFA), evidence given to the committee by the current head of FSC Australia, who also happens to be the national CEO of Timber Communities Australia (TCA), as well as being on the roundtable, has exposed the most obvious weakness of the ability of FSC to operate according to its basic principles in the Tasmanian setting.

Given the nature of the Tasmanian political culture it is almost impossible to envisage how the FSC model could avoid being corrupted here. It is already apparent that the same kind of tactical manipulation which applies to everything else to do with matters forestry is now being – has been – transferred to the workings of FSC. The key difficulty is maintaining the integrity of the social and environmental chambers. The current cause for concern is the eligibility of TCA in the social chamber, which has been a running sore – apparently ignored by FSC Australia for some time – but now highlighted in spectacular fashion by evidence given to the Legislative Council.

The statement by Farrell last week suggests very strongly that the ALP considers it can stack the social chamber of FSC without any difficulty. They don’t need to stack the environmental chamber because that is controlled by the ENGOs which have given a commitment to work for Ta Ann in the Japanese market. One way the Giddings-McKim government will attempt to stack the social chamber is by conflating the social interest with the environmental, as they did in their attempts to shore up support for Gunns’ quest for a joint venture partner in the aftermath of the roundtable agreement signed off (as the statement of principles) in September 2010. In fact, this process has already begun, with representatives of TWS and ET going to Japan to convince the market there that they speak for Tasmanian communities as well as the environment in spruiking their support for Ta Ann.

If FSC International has its wits alive to the Tasmanian political focus – and expertise – in undermining due process in a myriad of ways and differing circumstances, it would be aware that the key objective in trying to gain FSC accreditation will be in giving a clean bill of health to clear felling everywhere in harvesting areas, including in vital water catchments, as the continuing modus operandi of the Tasmanian industry. This is perhaps the main reason that the Tasmanian forestry industry strenuously resisted until the last couple of years any and all attempts to give FSC any accreditation authority. It was the very last thing that they wanted, in much the same way that many other places in the world, particularly in countries where democratic and social rights are ignored by those in power, shunned FSC accreditation like the plague.

It was only when the international marketplace became more aware of the social and environmental destruction occurring in source countries that it became more scrupulous about where it sourced timber. It was only in these very recent circumstances that the Tasmanian industry has considered introducing the FSC accreditation standard, but let it be said not in any way as an attempt to improve local industry standards. To the contrary.

FSC is regarded as an inconvenience by most players in the Tasmanian industry, a nuisance that nevertheless needs to be taken on board somehow. It is akin to the inconvenience of the Resource Planning and Development Committee (RPDC) in 2006-7, when the Tasmanian Lennon government and Gunns were confronted with the reality that Gunns’ pulp mill plans were stated as being “non-compliant” with RPDC requirements. The question then was not how to ensure compliance, but how to evade it.

So it is with FSC here and now in Tasmania. The question being asked by those in positions of power right now is the same question they asked in 2006-7. How do we overcome the problem posed by FSC? The answer has to be slightly different to 2007, because they can’t just scrap FSC like they did the RPDC, but it’s not too much different. As in 2007 it’s a matter of getting control of all the bits, in this case getting the right people into the FSC chambers.

Models already exist – quite openly – showing how this easily works in practice in Tasmania. The best one at the moment is the roundtable-IGA-TFA process, designer-made to exclude participation, to promote secret deals and lack of transparency. The argument always goes like this – “We can’t include everyone, so we have to make choices.” Later on, after all the decisions have been made without any public participation, and through a process which has remained totally confidential throughout, the argument then becomes – “This is the best possible decision because there aren’t any viable alternatives”.

There are of course no viable alternatives because anybody and everybody who had any alternative views were deliberately excluded from the start.

FSC International needs to be aware of how this political culture operates in Tasmania in relation to anything to do with matters forestry. They need to be aware that FSC is seen as a tool which needs to be controlled by the “right people”, those who have close links with all other power brokers in the industry, wherever they are – in the political party system, in parliament, in the union movement, in industry organisations and environmental organisations, in GBEs and in corporations. One informative example of this is the way that the CFMEU at national level has refused to endorse the implementation of FSC in Australia unless they have control of the social chamber and are not required to share decision-making with broader community representation. The culture requires rigging the whole FSC process by getting the right people into controlling positions in all three FSC chambers.

FSC International needs to be aware that none of this is regarded as corrupt in Tasmania. There is no such thing as a conflict of interest when it comes to any matters to do with forestry matters in Tasmania. It is the normal way that the timber industry operates and has operated for years.

There is no doubt whatsoever that in Tasmania the game is on to strip away the basic principles underpinning FSC accreditation to create a hollowed-out process which represents vested interests and reduces the social chamber to a rubber stamp. In the meantime, the ENGOs are in the marketplace working for Ta Ann, spruiking the “social” and “environmental” license that Ta Ann has in Tasmania, a situation that Ta Ann cannot hope to achieve anywhere else in the world.

In the end, it mightn’t matter if FSC International is able to prevent its brand being trashed in Tasmania. It could very well be that the Tasmanian Greens and ENGOs are able to convince the international marketplace that business as usual in Tasmania has all the triple-bottom line credits without the need for FSC. The Greens in particular seem caught in a classic dilemma of their own making here. They have just protested at the way that clearfelling is seeing sassafrass and myrtle and other special species timber being piled into waste for “regeneration” burns, but they have ignored throughout the whole roundtable-IGA-TFA process and agreement the need to reform management practices in the industry.

They can’t have it both ways. On the one hand they endorse whatever practices the industry wants to use in areas they have agreed are outside protected areas – and that is most clearly on the public record in statements made by key ENGO members involved in the process over the last three years – and on the other they criticise the trashing of future resources of special species timber which is an inevitable consequence of the policies they have endorsed under the TFA.

Maybe what Craig Farrell really meant to say was that now that the Greens and ENGOs have washed their hands of any attempt to stop business as usual in a smaller paddock, FSC accreditation was a shoe-in. What will now be fascinating to watch is how the Greens reconcile all the contradictions they have encumbered themselves with in their quest for the prime virtue of “compromise”.

The Greens have what might we now might describe as the “Crean syndrome”, or the “Simple Simon conundrum”, which is basically about compromise meaning anything from stream of consciousness changes in views from minute to minute, involving total backflips and reverse backflips in the space of an hour or two or less, to strategic contradictions articulated with absolute sincerity and conviction.

We know for certain that everyone with any influence in the decision-making processes in Tasmania about how the certification issues should be handled will not be influenced by mundane matters like sustainability. It’s all about horse-trading, not about consideration of principles that should be applied to management practices within the industry.

When the Green-ENGOs stop supporting the underpinning elements of the TFA, which include clear felling as the harvesting method, they might then be in a position to criticise the destruction of special species timber stocks which should be left alone, but until then they are blatantly hypocritical on that matter, just as they are with their unequivocal support for Ta Ann.

FSC International has an interesting task in preventing the corruption of the basic principles underpinning its accreditation processes in Tasmania, because all the current players with voices in decision-making – whether it be through the TFA signatories, or the political system – have deliberately excluded any consideration of changing practices in the industry which does not and cannot meet the FSC standards. All those people and organisations who/which have articulated management practices consistent with FSC principles have been deliberately excluded from the time that Bartlett and McKim established the roundtable in May 2010, and have also now been deliberately excluded from giving evidence to the Legislative Council by the Council itself.

FSC International needs to know that this is the Tasmanian reality.