The cutting edge

it is an attempt to achieve environmentally-friendly logging. Mil Madeireira, a Brazil-based forestry company, has evolved a way to cut trees in such a way that when a tree is cut, it falls in an area where few other trees would be affected. The company's logging method has been acknowledged by conservationists in their fight to stop the devastation of the world's largest tropical rainforest.

Hardwood buyers and sellers recently gathered in Brazil's Amazon capital Manaus to seek ways to preserve the nation's vast rainforests. One of the aims of "The First Workshop of Sustainable Forest Production in the Amazon," was to show loggers in the region how to map, select, cut, and transport their tropical hardwood with the least possible damage to the forest. These logging practices used by Mil Madeireira cost some 30 per cent more than the traditional methods -- but the company says the final bill can be reduced by wasting less wood and stresses that the result is a healthier surrounding of trees. "It is all in the planning," a spokesperson for Mil told fellow Amazon loggers .

However, it became clear at the workshop that the demand for wood from environmentally-friendly sources far exceeded supply. Conservationists said they were joining the timber traders in their fight to stop mass devastation of the Amazon and hoped to encourage better use of wood from certified "well-managed" forests. Some environmentalists said supply of the wood was falling far short of the demand from Europe and the us . There is also a growing Brazilian market for tropical hardwood products.

"I am getting calls from people in Brazil and from other countries asking where they can buy certified wood," said Garo Batmanian, Brazilian branch director of the World Wide Fund for Nature. Mil operates in its own forest of the same name, the only native one in the Brazilian Amazon to have certification from the Forest Stewardship Council ( fsc ), the leading forestry certifying group that has put its seal of approval on 17 million hectares worldwide to promote sustainable forestry. But other delegates said the fact that Brazil only has one certified native forest, whose size is just 80,000 hectares, is taking the wind out of companies' sails.

Tramontina, a large Brazilian tools and furniture company, is feeling the pressure from European buyers to get fsc certification for the wood used in its garden furniture. But director Luiz Ongaratto says he cannot find enough certified wood. "All the Europeans require certification," Ongaratto said. "I have competitors around the world who are plastering certification all over their catalogues."

Major furniture retailers, Tok & Stok, face similar problems and see the lack of fsc approval as an obstacle to their plans to sell certified furniture to young upwardly-mobile customers in wealthy Brazilian cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. "Our customers want more but our reaction is very slow," said Regis Dubrule, president of Tok & Stok, adding that he had already pledged to give preference to certified suppliers. Conservationists say the large number of local retailers must be co-opted in the battle to preserve the Amazon as it is Brazil -- particularly its prosperous southeast and south -- which buys 86 per cent of the nation's tropical hardwood. For every five trees cut in the Amazon, which produces 28 million cubic meters of hardwood per year, one ends up in Sao Paulo state, which has a population of 34 million.

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