Cele șapte păcate ale greenwashing-ului [The seven sins of greenwashing]

• Main Author: Drăgoi M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: ”Ștefan cel Mare” University of Suceava, Faculty of Forestry and “Marin Drăcea” National Research-Development Institute in Forestry - Station Câmpulung Moldovenesc 2016-12-01
• Series: Bucovina Forestieră
• Subjects: forest policy and planning
• Online Access: http://www.bucovina-forestiera.ro/arhiva/2016/16(2)/01_dragoi_155-159.pdf

This editorial tackles a problem the Romanian forestry journals have never dealt with: the greenwashing phenomenon. After a brief excursion into the communication clichés consciously or unconsciously delivered by the media to the public, we have scrutinized the seven sins of greenwashing, found into the forestry sector or promoted by the public authority responsible for environmental protection. The first sin we have found refers to the hidden trade-offs and the best example in this respect is the stumpage price. Being too high, neither the forest administrator/owner nor the contractor pays attention to the quality of the harvesting process, compromising the natural regeneration, destroying the upper soil and triggering erosion processes. Lack of evidence about the misbehavior of forest inspectors or unsubstantiated allegation when it comes to the ones responsible with forest regime supervision is the second sin, followed by the sin of vagueness. The best example of vague statement is the concept of favorable conservation status, barely defined for species but hard to define for large habitats. The sin of worship false labels goes along with the forest management planning system still stuck to the sustained yield principle even for very small forest ownerships, unable to produce steady annual yields simply because a regular age structure cannot be ever reached. The sin of irrelevance was exemplified by the paper waste that follows each public awareness campaign based on colorful flyers, personalized plastic ballpoint pens, folders and so on. Compared to the environmental cost of having this paper recycled the social benefit of having used this paper-based material fades out. The sin of lesser of two evils pops up whenever the public authority fails to enforce the best available technology, which sometime comes about with a higher social cost or less fringe benefits for all people working in forestry. After the collapse of the communist regime, Romanian logging companies had given up for good to use cable-cranes; instead they are still using heavy tractors even on steep terrain. The sin of fibbing is the last and the most serious one, illustrated by the big national scam of obsolete car buy-back system, financed by the national fund for environment. According to this scam the vouchers issued for the old cars are bought by national fund for environment but the VAT for the new car goes to the central budget. As the VAT is always greater than the voucher payed for the old car the State gest an income at the expense of the national fund for environment.