A group of 13 dissatisfied organisations involved in the timber certification process withdrew their participation from the National Timber Certification Council (NTCC) yesterday for failing to address several key issues.

They claimed that the council had ignored a number of objections raised by the organisations in the process of reviewing the country's standards for timber certification, known as the Malaysian Criteria, Indicators, Activities and Standards of Performance (MC&I) for Forest Management Certification.

The main task of NTCC, a government-sanctioned organisation, is to ensure Malaysian timbers are certified as being logged from sustainable forests before being exported.

The move is to assuage importing countries' concerns that the logs are indeed havested in an environmentally-friendly manner.

The NGOs questioned the value of their participation in a process which they claimed did not meet the requirements of, among others, the International Tropical Timber Organisation.

"We also feel that the objections raised by us several times, both in the regional and national NTCC consultations and in writing, have continuously been ignored and not resolved," said the organisations.

The organisations, including Sahabat Alam Malaysia, Centre for Orang Asli Concerns, Sarawak's Borneo Resources Institute and Suaram sent a joint letter to NTCC chief executive officer Chew Lye Teng and board of trustees chairman Freezailah Che Yeom stating the reasons for their withdrawal.

No endorsement

Among the issues the organisations claimed that NTCC failed to address was the inadequacy of the MC&I to give due recognition to the rights of traditional territories of local indigenous and forest communities.

"Furthermore, we expected that critical 'stakeholders', especially indigenous and local forest communities, will be informed in their own languages about the certification processes, rights and responsibilities, and that participation will be genuine and credible," said the organisations.

They also called for transparency, adequate funding for community involvement and independent facilitation of the whole process.

In addition, the organisations raised the conflicting interests of different sectors involved in the process and claimed that NTCC misconstrued their involvement as "giving consent and approval" to the MC&I.

"We state categorically in no uncertain terms that we do not endorse the MC&I as currently proposed by NTCC.

They also added that the division of working groups into three or four sectors did not work well as each sector was promoting its own interest and not working towards a common goal of achieving sustainable forest management.

"There has been no consensus on proceeding with four 'chambers', yet the council is currently proceeding along this path," said the joint statement.

Copies of the statement were also sent to Primary Industries Minister Lim Keng Yaik, Sabah and Sarawak chief ministers and key foreign and local groups involved in the timber certification process.