Nine environmental groups have agreed to end their boycotts of 21 forestry companies in exchange for a commitment to suspend logging and road building immediately on nearly two-thirds of Canada’s forests, stretching from British Columbia to Newfoundland. According to The Guardian:
The immediate gains include an end to highly destructive logging in the last remaining expanses of intact forests, protection for the remaining woodland caribou, whose population has shrunk to 36,000, and preservation of an important resource in fighting climate change. Scientists believe that the soil and trees in Canada’s coniferous forests store up to 20bn tonnes of carbon.
Unfortunately, we can’t expect that logging companies are doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. So what’s the rub? According to Avrim Lazar, president of the Forest Products Association of Canada, which represents the companies:
“We know that tomorrow’s markets are going to be judging forestry products on their environmental credentials. Having the environmentalist community on our side means that we are getting a huge branding advantage.”
Such bluntly opportunistic wording reminds me of how the World Wildlife Foundation came to the aid of IKEA when it was facing bad PR, as detailed in a recent great story by The Nation about the corruption of major conservation groups:
When it was revealed that many of IKEA’s dining room sets were made from trees ripped from endangered forests, the World Wildlife Fund leapt to the company’s defense, saying–wrongly–that IKEA “can never guarantee” this won’t happen. Is it a coincidence that WWF is a “marketing partner” with IKEA, and takes cash from the company?
If we are to learn from this story, we must buffer our excitement over the news of this environmental victory with a commitment to make sure it isn’t later corrupted by corporate power.
On the other hand, those running these corporations are likely to never actually care about the environment (certainly not against their profits). Offering a sort of tradeoff (you do something concrete and substantial for the environment, we give you environment credibility) might be an effective tactic to make those running corporations actually do something concrete and substantial.
This is not to deny the concerns you express; I would certainly expect such corporations to exploit that credibility (which is why, even after such tradeoffs, vigilance must remain constant, as your last sentence suggests). But it may be environmental credibility is the best “commodity” environmentalists can offer an entity that is only concerned with commodities and not actual good.
Here a write-up that offers some critical perspective on the deal –
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/3444
The VMC recently got a hold of the “confidential” agreement and published it on its website
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/3448
Also a response from First Nations and environmental activists that don’t agree with the deal
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/3444