A report investigated Ikea's dependence on Romanian timber, along with rampant deforestation and violent illegal logging in the country
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himThe logging season in Romania lasts seven months, from mid-September to April, a frenzy of chainsaws chewing on millions of spruce, pine, oak, maple, beech and fir. Some of the wood is legally cut, but most of it isn't.
Earlier this season, two Bucharest documentary makers working on a project on the illicit timber trade surveyed a large area in Suceava, a northern county where some of the country's largest sawmills are based and where Ikea owns thousands of hectares.
Read also: EU calls on Romania to end illegal logging and a plan against pollution
And hence the beauty: Ikea's search for timber is damaging some of Romania's oldest forests. Ikea would have long touted its positive environmental record and sustainability. But maybe it's pure greenwashing.
Thus, in an extensive report for The New Republic, Alexander Sammon and fellow environmentalists investigated Ikea's reliance on Romanian timber and whether some of these Ikea-owned forest areas are registered as protected areas due to their importance for protection. wildlife along with rampant deforestation and violent illegal logging that occurs in the country. Over the past two years, they have documented several violations of forest and environmental laws. Violations that cannot fail to have a negative impact on local habitats.
The Swedish furniture company has practically always flaunted its environmental record from the rooftops, has on its agenda initiatives to promote responsible management and calls for the protection of endangered species and the replanting of trees to compensate for deforestation caused by logging. In addition, it also announced plans to reduce its end-of-life furniture waste. And on the website, the company also claims to source mainly timber from "Sweden, Poland, Russia, Lithuania and Germany".
But there is something wrong and, according to the report, Ikea could get up to 10% of its timber from Romania by becoming the "largest private landowner"Of the country and the"largest individual consumer of wood”Of the world, as it has doubled its wood consumption in the last decade.
According to the report for The New Republic, in short, the Romanian environmentalists of Agent Green deliberately denounce Ikea, claiming to have photographic evidence that the company "was cutting without authorization and without an environmental impact assessment in a centuries-old forest".
Under no circumstances does IKEA accept illegally harvested lumber, a spokesperson for IKEA of Sweden AB promptly said in a statement to Insider, specifying:
We have developed a comprehensive due diligence system with multiple guarantees. This includes stringent requirements for documenting the origin of the wood from our direct suppliers, a global team of wood sourcing and forestry experts who perform over 200 audits per year, and third-party auditors who check our supply chain. with particular attention to the countries of the upper right.
This isn't the first time that Ikea has been at the center of controversy over its wood sourcing practices. In 2021, an investigation by London-based environmental group Earthsight found that the company had probably been using illegally obtained Russian wood for years, while even earlier, in 2012, a joint report from the United Nations Environment Program and Interpol had found that 15% to 30% of the "volume of wood traded globally was obtained illegally".
Where is the truth? What is certain is that Ikea's demand for timber is very high, as is the illegal exploitation of Romanian forests still firmly established. For this reason, doubts about the Swedish company's ethical integrity remain.
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Fonti: Agent Green / The New Republic
Read also:
- Ikea and FSC in the storm: children's furniture from illegal logging of protected and certified Russian forests
- Romania, the Amazon of Europe wildly deforested and robbed of the last primitive forests by crime
- In Romania they are killing the rangers who defend the last primitive forests in Europe from deforestation
