Guy Barnett
The state government’s bid to unlock some of Tasmania’s protected forests may risk Forestry Tasmania’s FSC certification attempt, because of information included in the application. Source: The Examiner
The government will this year introduce a bill to parliament aimed at opening up 365,000 hectares of forests to logging that were locked up as part of the peace deal.
However, Forestry Tasmania would not harvest those contentious areas in an attempt to protect its FSC certification bid.
The current application before the Forestry Stewardship Council included areas that were protected under the agreement as examples of conservation work, which meant the documentation submitted would become out-of-date if those areas were unlocked.
Resources Minister Guy Barnett said he remained “very confident” that unlocking forests would not affect the FSC bid because Forestry Tasmania would not harvest the trees or manage the land.
“FSC Australia has itself said that Forestry Tasmania’s FSC audit will not be affected by the government’s plans.”
However, FSC Australia CEO Adam Beaumont said the organisation did not make those decisions.
“There’s often a confusion that, we as the standard-setting body that say what responsible forest management looks like, are also the people that make the certification decisions.
“Necessarily, the system is strong because those certification decisions are made by people independent of us. They’re made by independent auditors.
“So there’s potentially been some misunderstanding about our role in certifications, and our ability to provide some assurance.”
Issues were also raised by Wilderness Society spokesman Vica Bayley around whether a “policy of association” could impact potential FSC accreditation.
Mr Beaumont said the policy meant organisations and governments could not undertake activities that were fundamentally against the principals of FSC in terms of breaching human rights or workers rights, or destroying high conservation values.
