Green group lobbies U.S. firms to stop buying Indonesian wood

Green group lobbies U.S. firms to stop buying Indonesian wood

Michael Erman, Reuters, New York

Environmentalists trying to halt illegal logging in Indonesia are asking Georgia-Pacific Corp. and Home Depot Inc., to stop buying wood from the region.

The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) said on Thursday it was calling on the two U.S. companies to "halt all purchases of Indonesian wood and pulp until the rights of indigenous people ... are recognized and the Indonesian government agrees to stamp out illegal logging".

Home Depot and Georgia-Pacific told Reuters that Indonesian products account for a small percentage of their wood purchases and that they stand by their environmental policies.

Georgia-Pacific spokesman Greg Guest said that the building and consumer products maker does not own or contract from logging operations in Indonesia and has been working to implement an environmental policy on tropical wood since 2001.

"We are simply buying wood for customers here in the U.S. from Indonesia," said Guest. "But we're not involved with the logging ... We're not knowingly buying any wood that has been harvested illegally."

According to RAN, Georgia-Pacific is the largest U.S. importer of Indonesian plywood.

Forestry authorities say illegal logging in Indonesia has reached 50.7 million cubic meters (66.3 cubic yards) per year with a predicted annual loss of US$3.42 billion.

Indonesia's forests cover more than 120 million hectares (296 million acres) but the annual degradation in the past four years has reached two million hectares.

Most of the woodlands are located in far-flung areas of the world's largest archipelago, where monitoring is weak and corruption rampant.

Mark Wilde, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, said there are "some real legitimate reasons to be concerned about the way that these Indonesian forestry operations are running".

"Most of them are running ... off of harvesting native tropical forests, but always with the promise that they are going to replant plantations. There's an issue whether they replant or not, but there's also an issue about whether you want all these native forests hacked down," Wilde said.

Guest said Georgia Pacific's policy is to follow the law of the countries where wood is forested, as well as U.S. law, and to take steps to make sure only legally harvested wood products are purchased. If a supplier does not meet the requirements in a reasonable time frame, Guest said, Georgia Pacific will stop doing business with the vendor.

Home Depot's vice president in charge of merchandise for lumber and building materials, Ron Jarvis, told Reuters that the company has been concerned with the sustainability of Indonesian forests, as well as illegal logging issues. He said it has taken steps to reduce its purchases from Indonesia by more than 70 percent.

However, the home improvement retailer, which buys about 1.5 percent of its wood in Southeast Asia, continues to buy wood from Indonesian suppliers that are becoming certified by the Forest Stewardship Council for sustainable forestry.

"We think that we are better off being over there, then if we completely turn our back and walk away," said Jarvis. "Because if we walk away they are still going to sell the wood from the forest, there is just not going to be any incentive for them to be certified."

But RAN representative Jennifer Krill said the group would keep the pressure on the companies until they stopped importing Indonesian wood entirely.

"Either these companies are with the movement to save endangered forests or they are against it," she said. "It is unconscionable for American companies to be harboring illegally logged wood and call that 'constructive engagement.'"