Forests expert spreads word

By CHRIS DANIELS

A New Zealand-born model for growing trees in a way that satisfies the most discerning European environmentalists is being taken to Geneva.

And spreading the word that New Zealand practices can help the environment while still earning forest owners money is James Griffiths, who has just landed a job with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Based at the council's international headquarters in Switzerland, Griffiths will, in his new position as "director - sustainable forest and biodiversity", work with the big players in the forestry industry and with non-business groups.

The idea is to improve the industry's record of sustainable forest management and enhance consumer confidence in products that come from these forests.

Griffiths has been chief executive of the New Zealand Forest Industries Council since 1994 and begins his new job in August.

Just weeks after learning of this appointment, Griffiths was appointed to a two-year term on the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as chairman of its advisory committee on paper and wood products.

The FAO is the United Nations' "lead agency" on global sustainable forest management and forest industry development. The committee he will chair provides private sector advice on its policies and programmes.

He has been on the 15-member committee since 1997, representing Southern Hemisphere plantation forestry countries.

Griffiths says his appointment to the Geneva position is an endorsement of the way the New Zealand forestry industry has gone about looking after plantation forests.

Of the 1.8 million hectares of sustainably managed planted production forests in New Zealand, more than a third have now been certified, and so endorsed by a third party.

Because of New Zealand's emphasis on plantation forests, nearly 80 per cent of the remaining natural forest areas can be left in national parks and protected areas - part of the 5-million-hectare conservation estate.

Griffiths hopes the size of accredited forest estate in New Zealand can double within one year.

Sustainable forestry is about achieving consensus among different groups on how to manage a forest properly, he says. This means that, first, it is not planted in an area where a natural forest has just been knocked over, and second, that it is replanted.

But that is not all. It must be "managed for all the values that are in a forest" - and this means the economics must stack up.

Community access, water and soil quality, occupational safety and health are included as well. If they are all put together, then that door frame being sold in Houston or Hamburg can be given a Forest Stewardship Council tick of approval.

Some of the big retailers of wood, particularly in the United States, were using certification as a procurement tool, only wanting to sell goods from well-managed forests.

"They don't want protesters in there saying they're selling tropical timber that's been destroyed. That's one of the reasons we're acting - because the customers are saying it."

"In the US, it is really coming because environmental groups are going to the big retailers and the big users of forest products, like publishing companies, and saying if they want green credentials to buy forest products, then they must have this logo on it."

One benefit to our growing forestry industry of having Griffiths treading the world stage is that what New Zealanders know about plantation forestry is not shared by those overseas.

"New Zealanders have grown up with plantations, we know the model, particularly over the past 30 years, where we set aside the natural forest, and we intensely manage our plantations, primarily for industrial fibre," he says.

Griffiths says there are not many New Zealanders who need convincing of the model, but plantation forestry is considered very negatively around the world.

In a lot of plantations across the globe, natural forests are destroyed, then inappropriate species planted, which can create disease and encourage new pests.

Workers are often exploited, land rights not respected and water badly used. It is this sort of perception that must change if our plantation forests are to achieve even better recognition overseas.

US Forest Stewardship Council

NZ Forest Industries Council