1.Way Beyond Greenwashing: Synopsis
2.Way Beyond Greenwashing: Extract

NOTE: Please forward, post, distribute, tweet, like, link to, and otherwise recommend this important article.
–-
–-
1.Way Beyond Greenwashing: Synopsis
Independent Science News

Way Beyond Greenwashing: Have Corporations Captured Big Conservation?
http://independentsciencenews.org/environment/way-beyond-greenwashing-have-multinationals-captured-big-conservation/

Synopsis: Led by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), many of the biggest conservation nonprofits including Conservation International and the Nature Conservancy have agreed a series of formal global bargains with international agribusiness. In exchange for vague promises of habitat protection, sustainability and social justice in developing countries, these conservation groups are offering to greenwash industrial commodity agriculture. The 'market transformation' methodology of the conservation nonprofits is a series of "Responsible" and "Sustainable" certification schemes for commodity crops that aim to dominate the market for Palm oil, Soybeans, Cocoa, Sugar, Biofuels, Cotton and farmed Salmon and Shrimp. The schemes, however, have none of the qualities of meaningful certification. They have low and ambiguous standards, questionable verification, no enforcement, and dubious traceability. What they will do is mislead the public, undermine organic and fairtrade agriculture, deflect attention from the real perpetrators of deforestation and destructive agriculture, and perhaps destroy the food movement, without delivering any social or ecological benefits.
–-
–-
2.Extract from Way Beyond Greenwashing: Have Corporations Captured Big Conservation?
http://independentsciencenews.org/environment/way-beyond-greenwashing-have-multinationals-captured-big-conservation/

...How Will Certification Save Wild Habitats?

A key stated goal of WWF is to halt deforestation through the use of maps identifying priority habitat areas that are off-limits to RTRS [Round Table on Responsible Soy] members. There are crucial questions over these maps, however. Firstly, even though soybeans are already being traded they have yet to be drawn up. Secondly, the maps are to be drawn up by RTRS members themselves. Thirdly, RTRS maps can be periodically redrawn. Fourthly, RTRS members need not certify all of their production acreage. This means they can certify part of their acreage as "Responsible", but still sell (as "Irresponsible"?) soybeans from formerly virgin habitat. This means WWF's target for year 2020 of 25% coverage globally and 75% in WWF's 'priority areas' would still allow 25% of the Brazilian soybean harvest to come from newly deforested land. And of course, the scheme cannot prevent non-members, or even non-certified subsidiaries, from specializing in deforestation (1).

These are certification schemes, therefore, with low standards, no methods of enforcement, and enormous loopholes (2). Pete Riley of UK GM Freeze dubs their instigator the "World Wide Fund for naiveté" and believes "the chances of Responsible soy saving the Cerrado are zero." (3). Claire Robinson agrees: "The RTRS standard will not protect the forests and other sensitive ecosystems. Additionally, it greenwashes soy that's genetically modified to survive being sprayed with quantities of herbicide that endanger human health and the environment." There is even a website (www.toxicsoy.org) dedicated to exposing the greenwashing of GMO Soy.

Many other groups apparently share that view. More than 250 large and small sustainable farming, social justice and rainforest preservation groups from all over the world signed a "Letter of Critical Opposition to the RTRS" in 2009. Signatories included the Global Forest Coalition, Friends of the Earth, Food First, the British Soil Association and the World Development Movement.

Other commodity certifications involving WWF have also received strong criticism. The Mangrove Action Project in 2008 published a 'Public Declaration Against the Process of Certification of Industrial Shrimp Aquaculture' while the World Rainforest Movement issued 'Declaration against the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)', signed by 256 organizations in October 2008.

What Really Drives Commodity Certification?

Commodity certification is in many ways a strange departure for conservation nonprofits. In the first place the big conservation nonprofits are more normally active in acquiring and researching wild habitats. Secondly, as membership organizations it is hard to envisage these schemes energizing the membershiphow many members of the Nature Conservancy will be pleased to find that their organization has been working with Monsanto to promote GM crops as "Responsible"? Indeed, one can argue that these programs are being actively concealed from their members, donors and the public. From their advertising, their websites, and their educational materials, one would presume that poachers, population growth and ignorance are the chief threats to wildlife in developing countries. It is not true, however, and as Jason Clay and the very existence of these certification schemes make clear, senior management knows it well.

In public, the conservation nonprofits justify market transformation as cooperative; they wish to work with others, not against them. However, they have chosen to work preferentially with powerful and wealthy corporations. Why not cooperate instead with small farmers' movements, indigenous groups, and already successful standards, such as fairtrade, organic and non-GMO? These are causes that could use the help of big international organizations. Why not, with WWF help, embed into organic standards a rainforest conservation element? Why not cooperate with your membership to create engaged consumer power against habitat destruction, monoculture, and industrial farming? Instead, the new "Responsible" and "Sustainable" standards threaten organic, fairtrade, and local food systemswhich are some of the environmental movement's biggest successes.

One clue to the enthusiasm for 'market transformation' may be that financial rewards are available. According to Nina Holland of Corporate Europe Observatory, certification is "now a core business" for WWF. Indeed, WWF and the Dutch nonprofit Solidaridad are currently receiving millions of euros from the Dutch government (under its Sustainable Trade Action Plan) to support these schemes. According to the plan 67 million euros have already been committed, and similar amounts are promised (4).

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT:
http://independentsciencenews.org/environment/way-beyond-greenwashing-have-multinationals-captured-big-conservation/