ABOUT

Barbara Bramble is senior program advisor for international affairs at National Wildlife Federation. She is a member of the international board of directors of the Forest Stewardship Council and also has been active in the development and promotion of shade-grown coffee campaign.

INTERVIEW

"I have been involved with the Forest Stewardship Council from its very beginning."

I have been the founder and the director of National Wildlife Federation's international department since its formation in 1982. In that capacity I started a number of programs here at National Wildlife Federation, including the Citizen's Campaign to Reform the World Bank and the other multilateral world banks. I also founded our Trade Environment Program, before NAFTA was passed, in the late 1980's to work on the negative impacts of globalization on people and the environment in many different countries. It was in that capacity that I began to learn about the certification concept.

After the 1982 Earth Summit we formed, along with Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, a tripartite forestry program that advocates for sensible global forest conservation policies. We call it The Global Forestry Project. One of our activities was representing all three of these organizations in the formation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). So, I have been involved with the Forest Stewardship Council from its very beginning. Three year ago, I was elected to the board of the US Initiative.

"The only hope we have for long term wildlife conservation is if private productive forests are managed in a sustainable way."

National Wildlife Federation is the nation's wildlife organization. We care about the legacy of wildlife habitat for our children and the future. Looking at the possibilities for improving habitat conservation, we have some very difficult choices. There are public lands and all kinds of various things that have to happen with management of public lands. But most of the wildlife habitat in the United States and other countries is private land that is being used for wood producing purposes--for timber, for paper pulp.

The only hope we have for long term wildlife conservation is if private productive forests are managed in a sustainable way. The Forest Stewardship Council gives us a chance to have some recognition for the landowners and the producers who are willing to work in a sustainable way.

Because of certification, consumers everywhere can directly support the producers who act sustainably by making choices when they purchase goods. The labeling and the certification system give our members the opportunity to take action themselves and support wildlife habitat conservation through their consumer choices.

"The concept of certification was probably born out of a simplistic view of how commerce and trade works."

The FSC is the great hope of so many organizations and people that you do not want to ever say anything negative about it. But the concept of certification was probably born out of a simplistic view of how commerce and trade works, and certainly most of the founders did not know much about how the wood business works.

They were not in the paper business. They were not in the logging business. They were not in the furniture business. They just wanted to conserve forests. And even the entrepreneurs on the economic side were motivated very much by their desire to save forests. A wonderful idea was born with assumptions that were rather simplistic.

The creators of FSC thought that consumers would immediately recognize the label and that they would go out of their way to find these products, which for many years were very rare in the market place. Since then, we have had to learn about business. And we have had to learn how to support the loyal business supporters of FSC by marketing their products and finding that small but growing consumer audience.

"As hard as this has been for everyone, most people have stuck with it."

We all had to learn about the rest of the system. If you were a conservationist, you did not realize that you had to learn about the forest business. If you were a forester, you did not know so much that you had to learn all about marketing. If you were in the marketing business, you did not realize that you had to understand so deeply the environmental issues and the social conflicts that are involved in forest management.

We all had to learn about each other and what our problems are and how to deal with those problems in a way that does not put people out of business. A lot of the early supporters on the economics side are not in business anymore. They were caught in the global downturn of the paper business, or they may have lost their land in some sort of takeover.

"The people who have stuck with it are indeed selling product now."

As hard as this has been for everyone, most people have stuck with it. I am very impressed with both the business side and the social and environmental side. People have stuck with it over all the years that it has taken to write the standards. We thought that would be easy, and it was hard. In the United States, we still have not gotten all of our standards finalized.

The beautiful thing is that these difficulties have mostly been surmounted. The people who have stuck with it are indeed selling product now. Our paper is coming onto the marketplace faster than we could have imagined. The green building business is booming. A lot of producers are finding markets. But no one thought it was going to take ten years to get to this point.

"We believe that people want wood and they want paper and they are going to do so for a very long time."

There has been a lot of disagreement between environmental groups about approach. My philosophy is we need all the approaches, from all the different environmental groups. There are a lot of organizations in the United States that are dedicated to reducing the forest cut in this country, certainly from the public lands, and they do not like to see trees cut for any reason.

We do not take that approach at National Wildlife Federation. We actually happen to support sustainable forest management. We support it through being involved in the assessments for Forest Stewardship Council. We advocate for rules and certification and all the different ways that you can promote sustainable forest management. We believe that people want wood and they want paper and they are going to do so for a very long time. It is our job to insure that the wood is taken in the best way possible to leave our legacy of wildlife.

"If there weren't radical voices out there, I think National Wildlife Federation would look like the radical one."

There are lots of groups that are trying to stop timbering. And while we do not agree with them, we do know that their actions, marching in front of public headquarters and trying to convince the public that they should seek alternative materials, is putting pressure on some of the worst actors in the logging business and the land management business. And this is really important. If they were not being the radical voice that was saying, "no" to some of the worst timber management, whether it is in the US or around the world, then we would look like the radical people.

We want to be the folks in the middle and say that, yes, there are some egregious practices on one hand, but actually over here on the other hand are some really good sustainable practices. We want to encourage those people. If there weren't radical voices out there, I think National Wildlife Federation would look like the radical one.

If FSC was not being pushed from the outside by these more radical groups, we might run out of steam, and we might say, alright, fine, the industry's moving in our direction, that's good enough. But because lots of groups say this is not yet good enough, it keeps us on our toes.

"We love to tell the story of shade-grown coffee."

I currently run a project where National Wildlife Federation is working with local environmental groups in Mexico. We are doing a cooperative training of their staff and members on a wide range of advocacy techniques. During this process, I met people from coffee cooperatives and the traders between Mexico and the US. These conversations convinced me and the National Wildlife Federation that we ought to promote sustainably-harvested coffee to our members and to the public. We are now marketing National Wildlife Federation shade-grown coffee, which is also Fair Trade certified and organic.

We love to tell the story of shade-grown coffee because there is hardly ever the chance for a person living in suburban America to directly help conservation of habitat for migratory birds. If you buy shade-grown, and it always helps if it is also organic and Fair Trade, you are not only giving money to the farmer to help keep them in business, but you are helping to keep their shade trees vertical, which means you as a consumer are actually helping to conserve habitat for migratory birds. It's a wonderful story; it's direct and it's simple.

"The solution is to bring the labels together."

Unless consumers can spend the time to read the material on the labeling websites of all these institutions to figure out what they are really guaranteeing, it is quite difficult to know what all the labels mean. The solution is to bring the labels together. Certainly in the coffee area, there has been some movement in that direction and I think we will see more over the next couple of years. I hope that there will be one label or a mixture of labels that everyone will be able to advertise.

The Fair Trade system encourages people to be organically certified. There is not one single label yet for shade-grown. Bird Friendly is the Smithsonian's label. And we have worked with the Fair Trade system and the Fair Trade labeling organization to introduce the idea that if they took on board the Smithsonian's bird-friendly criteria, then they would have organic as well as shade-grown covered, and it could all be brought together to make it easy for the consumers.

"If you buy any of the labels, you are doing better than nothing."

My attitude is, if you buy any of the labels, you are doing better than nothing. If you see Fair Trade, get that. If you see organic, get that. But quite frankly, most Fair Trade coffee in the United States is also organically certified. And if you can see a Bird Friendly label or something else that says shade-grown, try that. Any of these is better than the mass-produced coffee that is sun-grown, massively covered with pesticides, and deforested areas are used to grow it.

My message to a consumer is: find a coffee that you like. Make sure it is labeled by at least one of these systems and you are doing something. We hope we will get all the labels together over the next couple of years, but any of them is better than none.

"In order to mimic a forest you actually have to have some minimum numbers of tree species."

The Smithsonian standards are looking for a diversity of species of trees and ages of trees. It is not an impossible standard to meet. Many, many farms are traditionally grown with the kinds of criteria that Smithsonian has put in its standards. And, in fact, they have trained many of the organic certifiers in Central and South America to also be able to do an assessment for shade-grown Bird Friendly.

In order to mimic a forest you actually have to have some minimum numbers of tree species. So they are not certifying as Smithsonian Bird Friendly, a coffee plantation that has plenty of shade, but has all just a few species. They're trying to find conditions that are as close to a natural forest that you can get, in this agricultural based landscape. I think they've done a really good job in simplifying the criteria. Tree species diversity is one and there are very few others. The Smithsonian is doing an assessment of how they can work closer with the organic certifiers and with Fair Trade, and I hope that over the next couple of years that they and the Fair Trade labeling association will be able to have some harmonization of their labels.

"I have seen an enormous change in the last three years at the Forest Stewardship Council."

Things seem to be working now, and I hope that message is coming through clear. It was really hard to get it started. There were so many things that we did not understand and which held us back for years and years. But I have seen an enormous change in the last three years at the Forest Stewardship Council, for example, in terms of the amount of acreage that's being certified, the number of printers that have gotten certified to have FSC paper, the number of furniture makers and green building architects who are now looking for these products. It's really quite inspiring. But it has been a long time coming and it's been way harder than anybody ever expected.

Now that we have gone through all of that, we have a system that I think is going to be functional for the long term and is going to really change forest management operations for many countries and many different kinds of wildlife habitat.