ALBERTA, Sept 8 — With its vast expanses of forest, Canada has the most "certified” sustainable timber operations of any nation, according to the nonprofit organizations that attest to the environmental soundness of logging practices.

Such forestry-standards groups were born in the 1990s out of rage over tropical rainforest destruction. Today, they put their leafy seals of approval on toilet paper, two-by-fours and other wood and paper goods to assure eco-conscious consumers and investors they were responsibly produced.

Yet research shows Canadian forests have seen some of the world’s largest declines in ecologically critical primary and old-growth woodlands over the last two decades, even as sustainability-certification programs grew to include nearly all of Canada’s logging.

To track destruction of older woodlands in these certified zones, Reuters analyzed forestry data in Ontario, a major logging province. The analysis found that about 30 per cent of the certified boreal forests harvested from 2016 to 2020 were at least 100 years old. That resulted in the loss of 377 square miles of these older forests, an area the size of New York City and Washington D.C. combined, the analysis found.

Canada’s forests — accounting for 9 per cent of the world’s total — are considered critical to containing global warming. Environmental advocates have long pushed to end logging in primary or old-growth forests, which soak up far more climate-damaging carbon than logged-and-replanted areas. Primary forests are those that show no sign of previous harvesting. They can include old-growth areas — some with trees hundreds or thousands of years old — but also relatively newer woodlands that, for instance, might have regrown after wildfires.

Forest-certification nonprofits have chosen to allow logging of older forests through a host of concessions to industry. The harvesting of such areas in Ontario came despite the fact that 94 per cent of the province’s managed forests are certified by one of the two dominant environmental-certification organizations in Canada, the analysis found. Reuters analyzed satellite-derived logging data, government forest-age estimates and forest-certification maps to estimate the harvest of forests at least 100 years old in Ontario’s certified zones.

"Why the heck are they allowing logging — certified logging — in primary forests that are over 100 years old?” asked Dominick DellaSala, a conservation biologist with environmental group Wild Heritage who studies Canadian logging impacts. "For Canada to claim that it’s doing sustainable management, it’s laughable. To put a certification seal of approval on it is more alarming.”

The rapid loss of older Canadian forests highlights the flaws of certification programs that have come under heavy influence of the logging and forest-products industries, a Reuters investigation has found. The damage has come under the watch of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the world’s first such certification organization, founded in 1993 with environmentalist support; and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), a rival founded by a timber and forest-products trade group the following year.

This account is based on the Reuters analysis of Ontario forests, a review of hundreds of pages of FSC and SFI audits, along with policy and strategy documents, and interviews with 20 current or former FSC employees or members and more than a half-dozen researchers who study the environmental effects of Canadian logging.

In a statement, FSC said it has not wavered from its original commitment to responsible forest management and that its certification standards are "robust and credible.” SFI said its standards are "strong and continuously improving” and that its certification has become a "highly trusted solution” to the growing demand for products from sustainably managed forests.

Neither organization commented on the Reuters analysis or on whether they considered harvesting large sections of century-old forests to be sustainable.

The FSC and SFI certify logging companies’ practices in specific forests and examine consumer-product supply chains. Their seals of approval — a leaf insignia for SFI, and a tree with a checkmark for the FSC — have become essential to timber and forest-products firms amid rising pressure for environmental stewardship.

But these companies hold immense leverage over the big forest-certification nonprofits, which depend heavily on the industry for funding through certification fees, Reuters found. And since its inception, the FSC has watered down its forestry standards in response to the competitive threat posed by SFI and other industry-friendly certifiers, according to environmentalists and more than a dozen current and former FSC staffers and members, who advise the organization on policy and strategy.

Companies are free to choose which certifier to use, allowing them to avoid those with stricter standards and giving them clout to lobby all certifiers for permissive policies, said the FSC staffers and members.

Widespread certification of British Columbia timber operations over the past two decades hasn’t stopped the disappearance of more than half of the province’s old-growth woodlands over that period. Logging caused the vast majority of the declines in the biggest old-growth trees storing the most carbon, according to one 2021 study in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research and another last year in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. Studies in 2009 and 2017 examined areas of Quebec woodlands and found sections of forests dominated by trees more than a century old had dwindled to between 13 per cent and 28 per cent of the forest amid heavy logging. Without logging, these older sections would account for between 40 per cent and 68 per cent of these woodlands, the researchers estimated.

Herb Hammond, a veteran forest ecologist, ran a British Columbia nonprofit organization that conducted some of Canada’s first FSC audits in the late 1990s. He later left the organization, frustrated with what he described as too many compromises with industry.

"It’s easy to pull the wool over people’s eyes about what is good forestry,” he said. "Certification has turned out to be a bit of a dog’s breakfast. It doesn’t really mean anything.”

A ‘chess move’

Forestry certification has become ubiquitous in the global forest-products trade, helping companies such as Procter & Gamble, Starbucks and Penguin Random House appeal to eco-conscious consumers and investors. Those three companies declined to comment.

The certifying trend started in the 1990s when environmental organizations including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the World Wildlife Fund helped launch the FSC after failing to secure forest-conservation pledges from governments worldwide. They hoped to incentivize companies instead with a market-driven system that branded goods as sustainable, stimulating demand from discerning buyers. The FSC was founded in 1993 with a membership of business, environmental and community representatives.

Still, many companies were wary of aligning with environmentalists. The following year, the American Forest & Paper Association, a trade-group, started the SFI as an industry-friendly alternative. The trade association said its discussions about sustainable forestry began earlier, in 1990, and included input from academics and conservation groups.

Competition from the industry-backed SFI forced the FSC to reckon with how to maintain rigorous forestry standards while recruiting companies to certify, 10 current and former FSC members said. A 2002 FSC management report highlighted the need to "rapidly increase the supply of certified timber” or risk losing out to "an ever-increasing number of competing certification schemes.”

The FSC launched an internal push to boost its market share that led to compromises with industry and weaker harvesting restrictions, according to FSC documents and the FSC members.

Weakening FSC standards didn’t stop the SFI’s growth, however. The FSC certified about 46 million hectares of Canadian forests at the end of 2023, less than half the SFI’s 119 million hectares, according to the Forest Products Association of Canada, an industry group. Globally, the FSC certifies 160 million hectares compared to 295 million hectares by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). The PEFC is a global organization that oversees the SFI, which covers North America, and affiliated certifiers in other regions.

Both the FSC and the SFI largely survive on industry-paid fees. FSC International reported in 2022 that such fees accounted for 86 per cent of its US$58 million in annual revenue. The SFI derived 77 per cent of its US$12 million in revenue from such fees, according to its 2022 tax return.

Some environmental groups and advocates, while acknowledging the FSC’s shortcomings, continue to view the organization as the best option among imperfect alternatives. Jen Skene, a policy director at the Natural Resources Defence Council, said FSC certification represents a minimum standard.

"FSC is the most credible certification system out there,” she said, while adding that it should be viewed as "a floor, not a ceiling” for sustainability standards.

FSC told Reuters it had not weakened standards in response to SFI competition. Instead, FSC said, the rivalry has prompted it to "improve and refine” its certification process to ensure it remains "the gold standard for responsible forestry.”

SFI said competition among certifiers doesn’t "exert a downward pressure on standards” but rather promotes continuous improvement. The PEFC said it allows regional groups including the SFI to develop their own standards, which the PEFC said "contributes to long-term commitment to sustainable forest management practices.”

Though some corporations favor FSC-certified wood, few customers know the difference among certifying groups and their labels.

Peter Wood, a forestry lecturer at the University of British Columbia who has served on FSC-rulemaking committees, called the SFI’s creation a "chess move.”

The industry "wanted to take the power away from FSC, and it worked,” he said. "Now, everything is certified.”

Race to the bottom

FSC’s early standards emphasized the need to protect primary and old-growth forests. One pivotal provision read: "Primary forests ... shall be conserved. Such areas shall not be replaced by tree plantations or other land uses.”

But companies complained the policy was too restrictive and difficult to enforce, said Grant Rosoman, a Greenpeace forests advisor and former FSC International board member.

FSC members spent years debating policy changes and in 1999 removed requirements to conserve primary forests. Instead, the FSC adopted a more subjective requirement to protect forests with "high conservation value,” based on a complex matrix of environmental, economic and cultural characteristics.

That vague language, still in effect, gives companies broad influence over which forests qualify for protection. It has also spawned an industry of consultants – hired and paid by forest-products firms – to perform studies determining which woodlands have high conservation value, according to FSC audits and six current and former FSC members.

Rosoman of Greenpeace was among the FSC’s members who approved the language at the time. He now regrets it, believing its subjectivity enabled destruction of critical forests. "The continued logging of primary forests and old-growth forests was never resolved,” he said.

FSC acknowledged that its rules allow certified logging in such areas but said the high conservation value designation aims to ensure such harvesting is "conducted with the highest level of scrutiny and responsibility.”

In another major concession, FSC in 2004 introduced the "FSC Mix” system, which created a new label for products containing up to 30 per cent wood from non-certified sources.

The move came after pressure from pulp-and-paper companies including Klabin of Brazil, SCA of Sweden and Mondi of South Africa, as well as book publishers and furniture manufacturers, said Rosoman, who participated in the negotiations.

Mondi did not comment. SCA said it could not address its role at the time because the company has since been split into two firms. Klabin did not answer questions on whether the company influenced the FSC Mix rules. But it said the label eased the logistical burden of separating wood from certified and non-certified sources, a view echoed by SCA.

FSC Mix has since become the certification group’s dominant label, accounting for more than three-fourths of the FSC-product trade, according to a 2017 FSC paper. The paper added that FSC Mix was "the main source of income for the operating costs of FSC.”

The FSC told Reuters it doesn’t know what percentage of FSC-certified products use the Mix label today. The label, it said, helps companies "transition to more sustainable practices.”

FSC Mix rules give companies wide latitude to use the label. Some consumer-products firms are allowed to put the Mix label on products that contain no FSC-certified material at all because the FSC gives them credit for certified content in other products they sell.

The SFI also offers a label — "SFI Certified Sourcing” – that makes no guarantees that products contain any wood from certified forests, so long as companies meet certain other conditions.

Phil Guillery, a former FSC United States board member and supply chain integrity director, said allowing uncertified wood into the FSC system brought many more timber and forest-products companies into the organization and gave them more clout.

"They understood and learned about the politics of FSC, and they became very powerful,” he said.

Wood, the University of British Columbia lecturer, served on two FSC groups that starting in 2011 tried to overhaul what internal critics had called a weak system of company self-assessments to ensure their FSC Mix products did not contain wood from "unacceptable sources,” such as illegally harvested forests. The rules changes took eight years in a process that was heavily influenced by industry, he said.

The FSC told Reuters the process resulted in a "substantial strengthening” of rules governing non-certified wood. Wood had a different take, saying the endless deliberations did little to screen out problematic sources of timber. He called his involvement "an awful experience.”

"I just wanted to turn away from the whole project,” he said, "and warn people: ‘Don’t trust it.’”

Certified forest devastation

Environmentalists criticize the FSC but generally take a harsher view of the SFI, citing its founding by an industry group and weaker forestry standards.

The SFI disputes that it serves only industry interests, telling Reuters its standards reflect input from a diverse group of collaborators including environmentalists on its board.

Environmental groups including the Sierra Club, Stand.earth and the Natural Resources Defense Council say the impact of the SFI’s industry-friendly approach is clear in British Columbia, where the organization has dominated certification.

The province, a showcase of Canada’s raw beauty and diverse ecosystems, has seen old-growth forests decline by more than 50 per cent over the last two decades, according to the 2021 and 2023 studies. A subset of "highly productive” old-growth woodlands – forests with the largest trees storing the most carbon, and also the most attractive to logging companies – has declined by an estimated 85 per cent.

The SFI became the certifier of choice in British Columbia largely because industry perceived the FSC’s early rules as too onerous, said Karen Tam Wu, an FSC consultant during the 2000s.

The timber industry and Canada’s government share in the logging wealth. Canada’s forests are generally on public land, which means provincial governments get a cut of the revenue from every felled tree. In British Columbia, that totaled more than US$7.3 billion over the decade ending in March of this year, according to the province’s forest ministry.

British Columbia in 2020 announced a plan to protect its dwindling old-growth forests after years of public pressure. A year later, officials released maps showing at-risk areas where it called for a deferral of logging. But the government never barred logging in those zones, instead leaving it to industry discretion.

Some major firms chose instead to continue harvesting, including Vancouver-based Canfor Corp, a global timber-and-pulp producer.

Canfor in 2022 whacked about 3,700 acres of old-growth forest the government had recommended for deferral of logging, according to satellite imagery analysis from Stand.earth. The provincial government said earlier this year that more than 50,000 acres of old-growth forest had been harvested in areas it sought to protect.

BC’s Ministry of Forests said it is not seeking to end all old-growth logging and that harvesting in some areas is "possible and necessary” to support "local, sustainable jobs” while protecting forests.

SFI certified Canfor’s vast western Canada operations in 2019, 2021, 2022 and again last year. None of the publicly released audit summaries ever mentioned the cutting of old-growth forests. Major auditing firm KPMG, which conducted the reviews, had no comment.

Nothing in SFI’s standards would have prevented logging of old-growth forests.

SFI said old-growth-forest harvesting in British Columbia is "contentious,” involving negotiations among governments, industry and indigenous communities. It said its standards require compliance with "all applicable laws.”

Canfor said it is working with indigenous groups, communities and government to "review old-growth management and seek input into our proposed harvesting.”

‘Like printing money’

Logging companies’ ability to choose their own watchdogs poses the biggest obstacle to promoting high sustainability standards, environmental advocates said.

The auditing structure all but guarantees logging companies can get certified, said Simon Counsell, who was an FSC founding member while with the nonprofit group Friends of the Earth. He’s now an FSC critic.

"There’s a clear, vested financial interest” for the auditor, because granting FSC certifications leads to more auditing opportunities, Counsell said. "It’s like printing money.”

The FSC said it avoids conflicts of interest by outsourcing reviews and certification to independent auditors who examine companies’ forestry practices and are paid by the firms being certified. The companies, it said, pay a separate "annual administration fee” based on their forest-products revenue that goes to the FSC after being collected by the auditor.

In one example of industry influence over sustainability audits, a major Canadian timber company, Resolute Forest Products, defeated an effort in 2014 to strip its FSC certification in a western Ontario forest by suing and ultimately firing its auditor.

Resolute for years faced charges from scientists and environmentalists that its clear-cuts in the FSC-certified Black Spruce Forest had decimated habitat for threatened woodland caribou. As early as 2012, auditors at the Rainforest Alliance, a nonprofit hired by Resolute, found the timber company failed to meet FSC habitat-protection requirements. Another 2013 Rainforest Alliance audit examined complaints from environmental groups that Resolute’s logging "will lead to the extirpation of caribou from the Black Spruce Forest.”

Auditors suspended Resolute’s certification in January 2014, citing a failure to meet FSC forest-protection requirements. In May 2014, Resolute sued the Rainforest Alliance and its auditors, personally, calling their reviews flawed and biased. The company sought US$400,000 in damages. It also asked for an injunction blocking the audit’s public release, which an Ontario court granted. The lawsuit noted that certification was "critical to Resolute’s business model.”

The lawsuit was settled in 2015, with the alliance agreeing to assign new auditors to redo Resolute’s negative review. The follow-up audit found Resolute met FSC standards and had resolved the issues from the earlier audit.

Chris Wedeles, one of the original auditors Resolute sued, said he was "disappointed” that the new auditors "reviewed the same evidence and came to a different conclusion.”

The Rainforest Alliance reinstated Resolute’s certification. Resolute dumped the alliance anyway, moving its auditing business in 2016 to SAI Global, which has re-certified the company every year since.

After the settlement, Resolute’s then-CEO Richard Garneau told FSC’s international director general in a 2015 letter that the firm would pull out of FSC unless the certifier addressed the company’s complaints about burdensome FSC requirements. A top Resolute executive was elected to FSC Canada’s board in 2021 and continues to serve today.

Resolute did not answer questions about its forestry practices or its lawsuit but said it upholds "the highest standards” in forestry management.

SAI Global, Garneau and the Rainforest Alliance, which no longer conducts FSC forestry audits, declined to comment.

The FSC said it was not involved in the dispute between Resolute and its auditor and that it wasn’t influenced to change its standards by Garneau’s 2015 letter. FSC pointed to recent suspensions of certifications in Quebec as evidence of its commitment to protect caribou.

Meanwhile, problems with caribou in the Black Spruce Forest persist.

In 2020 and 2021, SAI Global auditors found that Resolute could not substantiate the effectiveness of its caribou-conservation plan. The auditors resolved the matter, however, after a Resolute consultant argued that logging would decline to a level that could sustain caribou populations — though not until 2039.

One of the world’s largest stretches of certified forests is in northern Alberta, where the FSC has signed off on the logging practices of Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc.

Over the last two decades, about 878,000 acres of these woodlands, an area more than twice the size of Los Angeles, have been set aside to make way for oil companies to operate open-pit mines, drilling sites and pipelines in Canada’s oil sands. The oil exploration involves clear-cutting and bulldozing the forest. Some environmentalists consider it one of the world’s most destructive industrial projects.

Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries holds logging rights to the forest, which includes old-growth woodlands, according to company disclosures and environmental studies. A clause in the company’s agreement with Alberta allows regulators to allocate chunks of the woods for oil-and-gas development.

When that happens, the FSC allows Alberta-Pacific to do a carve-out: removing the FSC certification from the land marked for oil development, while retaining certification for the surrounding forest. The arrangement has allowed Alberta-Pacific to retain certification in the area since 2005 despite the oil-related destruction.

FSC said it encourages certified firms to "engage in dialogue” and use their influence to affect land-use decisions such as oil-and-gas development. But the organization said such decisions are "outside of FSC’s direct certification scope” and are governed by provincial and national laws.

Alberta-Pacific said it is proud to have been FSC-certified since 2005 and that it has a goal of "maintaining biodiversity and other forest values.” It said FSC’s policies allow carve-outs for oil development because the resulting environmental impacts are "beyond the full control” of Alberta-Pacific.

Alberta-Pacific makes money from the oil development: Under an agreement with Alberta, it receives compensation from oil-and-gas firms for the destroyed forests. It can also sell wood from forests cleared for oil mining under the "FSC Mix” label, FSC audits show.

Some of the oil is extracted through surface mining, a process that requires the forest to be bulldozed and stripped of vegetation and soil to make way for pits that can be hundreds of feet deep.

"The mining is totally unsustainable,” said Barry Robinson, an Alberta environmental attorney who has specialized in oil-and-gas issues. "It will be generations before it ever grows trees again.” — Reuters