Forest Industries Council head off to greener pastures

By BRIAN FALLOW

Forest Industries Council chief executive James Griffiths is leaving to take up a position with the World Council for Sustainable Development.

He will be its director (sustainable forests and biodiversity) and will be based in Geneva.

It is something of a poacher-turned-gamekeeper move, in that Griffiths has spent much of the past year lobbying against early ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.

But he does not see it that way. "Our industry is totally sustainable," he said. During the past 10 years the proportion of the world's timber output from plantation forests had risen from 5 to 15 per cent and it would be closer to 50 per cent by 2040.

He detects a change in the attitude of environmental groups to plantation forestry. "They still have a problem, understandably, with converting native forests to plantations.

"But intensive plantation forests on what was marginal farm land, to take the pressure off native forests, is a different story."

The world council is a coalition of 160 international companies, with a commitment to sustainable development through economic growth, ecological balance and social progress.

Its 35 national affiliates, including the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development, involves about 1000 business leaders.

Griffiths takes up his new position in August.