THE PLAYFAIR PROJECT in Edinburgh and the North Edinburgh Arts Centre were today declared 'Forest Crime Scenes' by Greenpeace for using timber from the endangered rainforests of South East Asia and Africa in recent construction work, which was funded with over £10million of National Lottery money.Timber from the rainforests of Central Africa, which is home to chimpanzees and gorillas, was used in the Playfair Project, which received £7million of National Lottery funding. Doors at the project are made from sapele timber, which is being pushed towards extinction due to commercial exploitation.
The North Edinburgh Arts Centre received over £3million from the National Lottery and used a tropical hardwood, merbau, in the floors and wall panelling. Merbau is at risk of extinction due to destructive and unsustainable logging. It is regularly sourced from the last rainforests of Indonesia, where nearly 90 percent of all logging is illegal and the critically endangered orangutan is being driven to the brink of extinction.
This morning, activists from Greenpeace exposed the use of rainforest timber on both sites by delivering plaques reading 'National Lottery: Funding Rainforest Destruction' to the Playfair Project and the Arts Centre.
Greenpeace will also be visiting Edinburgh City Council to urge them to take action to implement timber purchasing guidelines to ensure that this does not happen again. Last month the Greenpeace Forest Crime Unit halted work at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow after it was exposed for also using merbau in its refurbishment, demanding that it be replaced with timber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) as being from legal and sustainable sources.
Nathan Argent, Greenpeace Forests Campaigner, said: "The National Lottery should be using people's money to support good causes, not supporting the destruction of the world's last ancient forests.
"If we don't want to confine the world's rainforests to history, it is essential that in the future all National Lottery and Local Authority projects in the UK insist on the use of FSC timber - the only way to guarantee that your timber has come from legal and well-managed forests."
Since 2000, Government departments have been expected to buy timber from legal and sustainable sources. Whilst Government ministers claim that they do issue guidance to Non-Departmental Public Bodies, like the National Lottery, to take sustainable developments into account, little effort has been made to translate these objectives into practice.
Recently the £40 million Lottery funded Cardiff Millennium Stadium was found to have used uncertified timber decking from Africa's Forest of the Great Apes where illegal logging is rife and many gorillas and chimpanzees are at risk of being wiped out. In 2002 a Lottery grant went on new lock gates for the Kennet and Avon canal, which were built from rainforest timber sourced from a company involved in illegal arms dealing in Liberia, fuelling civil war.
For more information, contact the Greenpeace press office on 020 7865 8255.
