FSC certificate of Swedwood Karelia suspended

Following the results of check, NEPCon audit company suspended FSC forest management certification issued to Swedwood Karelia. “This is the confirmation of the claims of Russian and Swedish environmental organizations expressed in December 2012 at the meeting with the managers of IKEA Group which owns Swedwood company. The most acute problems of IKEA are the lack of interaction with stakeholders and the unsolved matter of conservation in the valuable forests. This practice should be changed”, as the head of inter-regional public environmental organization SPOK Alexander Markov said to the Forest portal of Karelia. Markov participated in the negotiations of ecologists with representatives of IKEA in Stockholm.

Two years ago, IKEA came under fierce criticism from environmental organizations in Sweden, who accused Swedwood management and its Karelian enterprise of felling of the last untouched taiga sites in the North of Karelia. Defenders of the nature picketed shopping centres of IKEA Group, in response managers agreed to start negotiations with environmentalists.

At a meeting in Stockholm, activists demanded from the IKEA management to provide detailed maps of high conservation value forests leased by Swedwood Karelia, as well as to start negotiations for the conservation of these forests with stakeholders, including the regional government.

Besides, ecologists demanded from IKEA and Swedwood to make a public statement of support for the planned system of specially protected natural areas in Karelia and to take effective plan for the relocation of logging activities from old-growth forests and areas of high conservation value to secondary forests.

UPD. IKEA has recently announced that it will gradually shift furniture production from Karelia to Tikhvin, Leningrad region, but this step is not connected with environmental tensions and was planned earlier.