There is a solution to the problem of African blackwood disappearing and forest-dependent people getting poorer:
1. Provide local people with the security and support needed to harvest the trees at sustainable rates – the sound part;
2. Help them get the best possible price for the wood – the fair part.
The mechanism that brings it all together is the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an organisation comprised of people and organisations that want to create responsible management of the world’s forests. In our case, we are bringing together all of the different elements in the supply chain involved in production of musical instruments using African blackwood.
This 'Chain of Custody' starts in the forest. The Mpingo Conservation Project (MCP), one of the campaign partners, works with rural people in Tanzania and helps them set up forest management schemes that provide them with secure access to the forest resources in their area.
MCP acts as group manager for all the different community-managed forests and helps calculate sustainable harvest rates, i.e. how many trees can be cut each year without the overall number of trees declining over time. By cutting the trees at sustainable rates and managing the forest properly, any products that are made from the timber can be stamped with the recognisable FSC trademark that identifies it as originating from a sustainably managed forest as defined by the FSC’s governing principles.
The next step involves ensuring that each of the other parties in the Chain of Custody agrees that they will only use sustainably harvested African blackwood in a given instrument and in return they use the FSC stamp on that instrument. The end result is a musical instrument sold with the FSC stamp enabling buyers to identify it as a product from a sustainable source and where a fair price was paid to the community.
(If you were wondering what Mpingo means, it is the Swahili name for African blackwood, Swahili being the local language in Tanzania.)
