Dear Editor,
I welcome the intentions expressed in Sunday Stabroek on March 18, by the General Manager of the Barama Company Limited (BCL) for an improvement in that company’s standards of forest management (‘Barama corrects forest management deficiencies – expects reversal of suspension’). As Girwar Lalaram says, the requirements of the international Forest Stewardship Council are more wide-ranging and rigorous than the Code of Practice for Timber Harvesting of the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC), but currently BCL is a long way short of complying with the GFC requirements. I recall that WWF had by early 2005 paid at least US$ 160,000 to help BCL improve its performance to the FSC standard, so I am not convinced by a WWF inspection “showing that the company has fulfilled most of the corrective actions required”; and the inspection report is not available on the website of WWF Guianas.
Also, the major faults noted by Accreditation Services International GmbH in the public summary of its report issued in January could not possibly be corrected in such a short time. It is not enough for BCL to make promises of good behaviour in future. For FSC certification, BCL needs to demonstrate that it is actually complying with the FSC ethos all across its legally and illegally operated forest concessions, and putting into practice all the FSC required actions in the area proposed for partial certification.
If BCL is indeed confident that it can show these actions in the field, and would not that be truly wonderful, then let BCL arrange some open days so that we can all have a look? And by “open days” I do not mean closely shepherded tours of its Land of Canaan or Buck Hall operations.
It is about a year ago that the GFC commissioned the consultancy Proforest to develop a legality verification system for Guyana. One of the requirements of the European Union for voluntary partnerships agreements to allow timber to be exported into the EU in future is independent forest monitoring, with no censorship of the reports. Is BCL up to this challenge?
Yours faithfully,
Janette Bulkan
