By underming due process in the FSC, the Tasmanian Forestry Agreement (TFA) legislation jeopardises prospects of peace in Tasmania’s forest wars.
A resolution to over 30 years of Tasmanian forestry conflict ought to be found in the chambers of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The 3 FSC chambers (representing Economic, Social and Environmental interests) should be able to facilitate negotiations that produce a genuine compromise. By giving each chamber a 33.3% share of the voting power, the chambers should be balanced evenly irrespective of how many members have subscribed to each chamber. At least that is the theory. It might also be the practice, but for the ability to undermine due process by rigging the behaviour of the chambers to bias one interest over another; a process known as “stacking”.
Several methods could be used to stack the FSC chambers, and a couple of these will be covered later. First though, it is important to explain what is going to happen within the FSC in order for Forestry Tasmania (FT) to achieve FSC certification; a goal considered vital for its future success. To begin with, FSC must develop an Australian National Forestry Standard. As might be expected of a process that certifies a triple-bottom line approach to forestry, this “standard” will be determined as a consensus of voting from across the 3 FSC chambers.
Delivery of this Australian National Forestry Standard is not a quick process, being mooted at around 18 months from now (i.e: end of 2014).
Perhaps the most morally bankrupt way to corrupt the integrity of an FSC chamber would be to blackmail the chamber’s membership. Yet this is exactly what the Tasmanian Legislative Council decided to do to the Environmental chamber via the TFA legislation. They have dictated that there will be no new forest reserves unless FT becomes FSC certified. This introduces a bias that favours the economic interests of both the government (since FT are a Government Business Enterprise) and the forestry industry. It strongly incentivises the Environmental chamber to set a lower bar when developing the National Standard, to make it easier for FT to gain certification.
Coming maybe a close second in the moral bankruptcy stakes, the integrity of an FSC chamber could also be corrupted by infiltrating it with members who should rightly belong in another chamber.
An example of this might be Timber Communities Australia (TCA), reputedly a long-established front-group of the Timber Industry who are seated in the Social chamber of the FSC (see my previous article here: FSC Australia’s Governance in Question ). It should also be noted that the CEO of TCA, Mr Jim Adams, also has an individual membership of FSC in the Social chamber (see the FSC list of members here ). Unless Mr Adams is ideologically at odds with the organisation he represents as CEO, then the TCA viewpoint would seem to have control of two votes in the Social chamber. It should not be forgotten either that some members of the Legislative Council responsible for the TFA were also TCA members.
Another possible example of an industry group voting within the Social chamber might be Forestworks, since it is claimed in their Annual Report ( here ) that they are “industry owned”, and that “ForestWorks is the national industry organisation working to assist with the development and growth of the forest, wood, paper and timber products industry”. They certainly sound like an industry group to me.
Now let’s do some simple maths to illustrate how easy it could be to stack the FSC chambers to favour economic interests. Since the Economic chamber is entitled to 33.3% of the FSC vote anyway, industry would only need to co-opt another 17% of the vote from elsewhere to achieve an overall voting majority. It is obviously very hard to quantify the exact impact upon the Environmental chamber of being blackmailed over forest reserves by the TFA. Let’s suppose that just a third of their voting power could be swayed to support a compromised position which they otherwise would not have supported. That would give industry another 11.1% of the vote, taking their total up to 44.4%. The Social chamber only has around 15 members, so let’s assume that each member has a vote worth 2.2%. It would then require only three Social chamber members to also favour the compromise for it to gain majority.
It seems unlikely that industry could achieve complete dominance of the FSC agenda unless they had infiltrated other chambers on a large scale. It is more likely a question about the extent to which the voting power of the chambers can be influenced to accept reduced environmental and social outcomes.
Government would do well to remember the lesson of Gunns when undermining due process, because it can fatally backfire. Fast-tracking of the Pulp Mill actually fast-tracked Gunns into oblivion, due to the loss of any social licence. The TFA legislation suggests the government are unable, or unwilling, to learn that they should not meddle with due process. Just as Gunns’ holy grail was their Pulp Mill, FT now have their future staked upon FSC certification. It is too early to say whether the government’s blackmailing of FSC’s Environmental chamber will backfire on them, but it seems plausible. The result of community opposition to a sham FSC certification process might trigger FT’s eventual demise, should the bar of the National Standard be set too low.
Remember also that with the FSC chambers developing an Australian Standard, it is not just Tasmanian forestry practices that are at stake. The evolution of this standard needs careful scrutiny by experts in sustainable forestry. The Environmental chamber members would do well to heed their expert advice, and call the Legislative Council’s bluff in face of their clear attempt at blackmail.
Kev Rothery is an IT Specialist who emigrated to Tasmania 8 years ago. Kev takes a keen interest in local affairs, and is a former employee of The Wilderness Society Inc. He believes in the importance of public participation, and the right of the public to be properly informed.
