More success for Greenpeace campaigns
11/08/09
British shoemakers, Clarks, which all discerning British schoolchildren wear (including a much younger me), join the list of companies agreeing not to source leather products from Amazon deforestation.
Greenpeace's report "Slaughtering the Amazon" named and shamed many global companies involved in supply chains that led directly back to deforestation.
So far Nike and Timberland have signed up to stop sourcing from areas of deforestation and they have been joined by sports giant Adidas. Marfrig - a Brazilian beef exporter - have agreed to support a moratorium on further deforestation for cattle ranching - conversion of land for cattle ranching remains the biggest driver of Amazon deforestation.
Brazilian environment minister, Carlos Minc, told the Guardian: "With government pressure on one side and with the pressure of the consumer on the other, we have started to close in on environmental criminals." Sadly, it was reported earlier today that the progressive Minc will be stepping down from his post in March to pursue other political offices and perhaps a result of his ideas being unpopular with politicians and farmers.
But Greenpeace don't want to stop there. JBS, a major supplier of beef to the UK market place is next in the firing line.
There has also been progress in North American forests. Greenpeace has been campaigning for five years for Kimberley-Clark, makers of Kleenex tissues, to help save Canada's Boreal Forest - North America's largest ancient forest and home to an astounding array of wildlife. Although Kimberley-Clark has set a an ultimate goal of 100 per cent of the wood fibre used in its products to come from sustainable sources but it has only publicly committed to achieving 40 per cent by 2011from either recycled sources or certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
Kimberley-Clark has also said it will eliminate any fibre from the North American Boreal Forest that is not FSC certified. However, FSC is a hugely contentious certification scheme with reports of virgin, ancient forest being felled in order to make way for FSC stamped plantations. But Kimberley-Clark's willingness to engage in this mammoth issue - even though it has taken five years - surely shows some footsteps in the right direction.