Greenpeace today called for an inquiry into how timber from endangered rainforests is being used in National Lottery funded construction work at the National Maritime Museum, Swansea. In a letter sent to the head of Swansea City Council, Councillor Chris Holley, and Michael Houlihan of the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, Greenpeace are demanding to know how timber from the last remaining forests of Indonesia and Malaysia has ended up being used on the site. It is estimated that nearly 90 percent of all logging in Indonesia is illegal.
Greenpeace monitoring has revealed that timber from the rainforests of South East Asia, home to the critically endangered orang-utan and a host of other endangered species, has been used for the flooring and structural fixtures in recent construction work. Indonesian plywood had been supplied by a company, Tjipta Rimba, who are known to source timber from the tropical forests of Sumatra - home to the critically endangered Sumatran tiger, where habitat loss from illegal logging and forest clearance is pushing the species to the brink of extinction.
Ironically, the National Maritime Museum project has a clear specification clause in place to use timber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which ensures that timber comes from legal and sustainable sources. The use of South East Asian rainforest timber on the site shows that the contract has not been implemented.
Since 2000, Government departments have been expected to buy timber from legal and sustainable sources, yet these guidelines have not been extended to Non-Departmental Public Bodies, like the National Lottery. It is clear that on many lottery funded projects little effort has been made to ensure timber used comes from well managed forests. Greenpeace is calling on National Lottery to introduce strict guidelines and monitoring of timber use on their projects, like the National Waterfront Museum, to ensure that all timber comes from legal and sustainable sources.
Nathan Argent, Greenpeace Forests Campaigner, said: "The worlds rainforests are being trashed for cheap timber products like plywood which are then used on building projects like this one."
"If we don't want to confine these rainforests to history, it is essential that in the future all National Lottery and Local Authority projects in the UK ensure that FSC timber is used on building projects - currently the only way to guarantee that your timber has come from legal and well-managed forests."
The National Maritime Museum, which has received over £11 million of National Lottery money, is one of 10 Lottery-funded sites that are being monitored by Greenpeace to see whether the timber they are using can be shown to be coming from well-managed forests. In September, Greenpeace halted lottery funded refurbishment work at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, after it was exposed for using endangered merbau, also from South East Asian rainforests. The flooring contract was suspended, and an alternative species, European Beech, is now being used to complete the work.
The National Waterfront museum in Wales is not the first Lottery funded project in the country to use rainforest timber. Greenpeace research has shown that the £40 million Lottery funded Cardiff Millennium Stadium has used uncertified timber decking from Africa's Forest of the Great Apes where illegal logging is rife and species such as gorillas and chimpanzees face extinction in the wild.
For more information, contact the Greenpeace press office on 020 7865 8255.
