‘Tsunami rebuild must not deplete rain forests’

Date: 02/03/06

Environmentalists and aid groups say problems finding environmentally sound wood to build homes for tsunami survivors should not be allowed to thwart EU efforts to legislate against unsustainable timber.

The EU has come under increasing pressure from lobbyists in recent years to ban imports of timber that do not meet environmental and fair trade human rights standards.

But reports that the International Federation of the Red Cross’s decision to use only sustainable timber in Indonesia had left tsunami victims stranded in temporary tent shelters, have raised uncomfortable questions about the effect of meeting tough standards during disasters.

Pete Haydon of the Red Cross said the timber delays were down to the impossibility of finding sustainable wood that had also been produced locally. "We try to source supplies locally, to rebuild the local economy," he said.

Around 10,000 square metres of suitable wood has now been ordered from New Zealand, the Baltics and Scandinavia which is due to start arriving later this month.

Haydon defended a decision to reject local wood that did not meet the Red Cross’s environmental standards. Timber that was not sustainable, he explained, would be "either illegal, or just wrong and unsustainable... the Red Cross will never support illegal or unsustainable timber".

Haydon would not say whether the wood available in Indonesia was illegal as well as unsustainable, describing it only as "unsuitable".

Using timber that did not meet environmental standards, he added, "effectively creates a rod for your own back".

He said: "Cutting down Sumatran rainforests for example just creates major problems for other people... That’s not the way sustainable aid delivery works."

Haydon also defended the quality of the provisional housing: "It has been established that the temporary shelter installed has avoided the spread of diseases...Conditions in the camps are humane, and it’s better than chopping down rainforests."

Faith Doherty of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) also rejected the suggestion that future illegal logging legislation should allow the use of unsustainable timber in extreme situations, like the tsunami.

Doherty said using disasters as an excuse would just perpetuate dangerous and unfair logging practices.

The EIA plans to bring a group of Indonesian activists to Brussels from 13 to 16 March "to ask the EU why it isn’t legislating against illegal logging".

Article reports that environmentalists and aid groups said that problems finding environmentally sound wood to build homes for tsunami survivors should not be allowed to thwart EU efforts to legislate against unsustainable timber.