Certified timber helps protect rain forests

Ecochoice founder and director Mike Bekin explains how the Forest Stewardship Council provides a business model that works.

Ecochoice founder and director Mike Bekin explains: "Being from Brazil, I am very aware of the impact of modern business on poorer countries.

I believe illegal logging in the Amazon and in other tropical forests are a result of pressures from cattle ranchers and soya and palm oil plantations which make more money than legal or even illegal forestry.

In a developing country like Brazil, such economic forces put the forests under enormous threat.

"Under these circumstances, the only way to protect a forest is to make money from it, but that must be done sustainably by respecting both the forest's growth rhythm and its people.

That's where the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) comes in.

It provides a business model that works on three fronts: it guarantees long-term protection to the forest from being over-logged (environmental sustainability); it protects local people from being exploited or expelled from the land (social sustainability); and it helps to prevent the forest's owner from having to sell it for extensive agriculture or pasture in order to make money (economical sustainability).

"Illegality in the timber trade is still the norm across the tropics, so niche company Ecochoice is devoted to marketing only timber from independently certified origins - most through the FSC which has internationally accepted business methods of responsible forestry.

"Support for certified tropical woods by the developed world is the means to preserve the rain forests which are at far greater risk in the 21st century than woods in temperate zones such as Western Europe, US and Canada.

Timber is the only renewable construction material, since nothing else can grow again.

What's more, growing timber sucks carbon and releases oxygen, so it's also a great answer to global warming.".

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