The Global Forest and Trade Network is WWF’s flagship programme to promote legal and sustainable timber products. Its stated objective is to ‘transform the global marketplace into a positive force to save the world’s most valuable and threatened forests’ by helping companies to produce and trade in ‘credibly certified’ wood products.
Pandering to the Loggers reveals how the scheme is allowing companies to reap the benefits of association with WWF and its iconic panda brand, while they continue to destroy forests and trade in illegally sourced timber.
Global Witness examined the operations of three paying members of WWF’s network in detail, finding that:
● Malaysian company Ta Ann Holdings Berhad has wider operations which are logging and clear-cutting orangutan habitat in the Heart of Borneo
● It emerged that ten years after joining the scheme UK company Jewson was still trading in illegally sourced timber
● Swiss-German company the Danzer Group is facing
new allegations of involvement in conflict between
communities and authorities in an area of operation
of one of its subsidiaries in the Democratic Republic of
Congo.
