At last! Forest Stewardship Council admits that it has certified logging operations on the territory of Indigenous Peoples living in voluntary isolation
One of these certificates was awarded in 2007. The other in 2011.
The Forest Stewardship Council claims to “set the standard for responsible forestry worldwide”. FSC claims to operate “the most rigorous forest certification system”. And FSC claims that it “is committed to working with Indigenous Peoples by upholding their ownership, use and management rights across all forests”.
FSC also claims to have a process of free, prior and informed consent, “which has clear guidelines that take into account their livelihoods as well as social and cultural way of living to preserve it”.
But in 2011, FSC certified a logging company called Maderera Canales Tahuamanu S.A.C. (MCT). The logging company’s concession overlaps the territory of the Mashco Piro Indigenous People, who live in voluntary isolation in the rainforests of Peru close to the border with Brazil.
Clearly, a process of free, prior and informed consent is impossible with Indigenous Peoples living in voluntary isolation. Equally clearly, FSC should never certify logging operations in the territory of Indigenous Peoples living in voluntary isolation.
FSC finally acknowledges that MCT’s logging concession is on Mashco Piro terrritory
On 23 May 2025, FSC put out a statement acknowledging that that MCT’s “certified concession partially overlaps with forest areas inhabited by IPVIs [Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation]”.
FSC’s acknowledgement that it had certified logging operations on the territory of Indigenous Peoples living in voluntary isolation has been a very long time coming.
Journalist David Hill has been reporting on the Mashco Piro and FSC’s blunders on their territory for several years. He notes that it has taken FSC a “bizarrely long time to understand — or at least publicly acknowledge” that MCT’s concession overlaps the Mashco Piro’s territory.
In August 2022, following an encounter with the Mashco Piro, in which one logger was killed and another seriously wounded, FSC put out a statement:
We will assess whether our rules and the management of them need to be strengthened to better cater to these complex situations with peoples who have chosen to live in isolation.
FSC already has rules. What it needs to do is apply them.
In November 2022, Hill interviewed Kim Carstensen, then-FSC’s Director General. Carstensen appeared not to understand that a large area of the logging concession was part of the Mashco Piro’s territory.
In July 2024, FSC put a statement on its website saying that it will “conduct a comprehensive review of MCT’s compliance with duties to respect and protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples living in self-isolation”.
In August 2024, FSC announced that it would “provisionally suspend the certification” of MCT. The suspension started on 13 September 2024. FSC hired Assurance Services International (which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of FSC) to “undertake a thorough investigation”.
FSC argues that the principle of free, prior and informed consent “cannot be applied in the context of IPVIs due to their right and decision to remain uncontacted. This represents a gap in FSC’s current normative framework that we are actively working to bridge.”
This really is bizarre. FSC claims to recognise Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Several Indigenous organisations have written to FSC since 2020 alerting FSC to the problems associated with logging in the Mashco Piro’s territory. In 2024, Survival International launched a petition (which currently has almost 21,500 signatories) demanding that the certificate be terminated.
Marcus Colchester is the founder and former Director of the Forest Peoples Programme. His entire career has focused on securing indigenous peoples’ rights to their lands and livelihoods.
Colchester is currently a board member of FSC.
In July 20224, REDD-Monitor wrote to Colchester asking for his response to Survival International’s press release about the “urgent need to revoke all the logging licenses in the area, and recognize that the territory belongs to the Mashco Piro people”.
I also asked him to explain what he was doing in his role as a board member of FSC to “ensure that this situation is addressed and that in future FSC does not certify logging concessions inside the territory of Indigenous Peoples living in voluntary isolation”.
Colchester did not reply.
One year later, FSC has not terminated MCT’s certificate. Instead the suspension has been extended to November 2025. “Sounds to me like the FSC is just playing for more time,” as David Hill puts it.
The Madre de Dios REDD project
FSC’s statement about MCT also notes that,
This has implications for another certified organization, Maderera Río Acre SAC (MADERACRE), whose certified forests also overlap with IPVI inhabited forest areas, though to a significantly lesser extent.
The Maderacre logging concession is one of the two logging concessions that form the Madre de Dios REDD project.
In April 2022, FSC blocked and suspended the certification of the other logging concession, run by a company called Maderera Río Yaverija S.A.C. (Maderyja). In September 2022, Reuters reported that the Chinese director of Maderyja, Ziaodong Ji Wu, had been under investigation for two years “for belonging to a criminal organization, collusion, bribery and influence-peddling”.
The Madre de Dios REDD project relied on the argument that these two logging companies were carrying out “sustainable forest management” which would result in less damage to the forest (and therefore reduced emissions) compared to industrial logging operations.
The evidence for the “sustainable” logging of the forests in the Madre de Dios REDD project was the two FSC certifications. One has been suspended for three years. It is surely only a matter of time before the second is suspended.
Nevertheless, the carbon certification company Verra still lists the project in its database and the project is still selling carbon credits.
To make matters worse, the reality is that Maderacre’s operations are basically industrial logging, as these screenshots from a Maderacre promotional video reveal:
Maderacre’s website includes gushing testimonials from FSC Peru, auditing company NEPCon Peru (which is now part of Preferred by Nature), and WWF Peru.
Alba Solís of FSC Peru states that,
Since 2007, Maderacre has held FSC forest management certification, making it the oldest certified forestry concession in Peru. Since then, it has maintained its certification through annual audits and renewals every five years.
Yet not once did these audits or renewals, that took place over a period of 18 years, raise the alarm about the fact that a huge part of Maderacre’s logging concession is the territory of the Mashco Piro — Indigenous Peoples living in voluntary isolation.