Day 292 - 01 Nov 96 - Page 22
1 environment partly because it involves the destruction of
2 trees. Theo Hopkins, for us, for the defence, who is an
3 independent researcher involved in forestry management, and
4 he also has hands on experience of forestry management,
5 particularly had studied the degradation and destruction of
6 temperate and boreal forests. He said that "Large scale
7 commercial forest exploitation has led to the progressive
8 reduction of natural old growth, or ancient forests, which
9 are still being logged all over Europe, North America and
10 elsewhere. This has generally continued despite protests
11 and official so-called protection measures."
12
13 He explained how mono-culture plantations have tended to
14 replace natural forests, but could not match such forests
15 in their biodiversity or in social, ecological, cultural or
16 spiritual value. Therefore, for him, they could not be
17 described as sustainable forests, even under official
18 international guidelines. I think it would be fair to say
19 that the way industry views 'sustainable' would be turning
20 the whole planet into one big resource factory that they
21 keep on using indefinitely, which is not how the public or
22 anybody else, certainly all the experts, could view the
23 importance of forests; that the biodiversity has to be
24 sustainable, the spiritual value has to be sustainable and
25 just the nature of forests, variety and types, has to be
26 sustainable. I think that has become an international
27 recognition.
28
29 Mr. Hopkins said the use by McDonald's of products
30 utilising paper sourced from such forests was, quote,
31 "self-evidently damaging to the environment". Only since
32 the late '80s has the forest industry publicly had to
33 recognise these problems, faced with publicity and pressure
34 from the public. "In particular", he said, "in contrast to
35 the ecologically rich natural forests, plantations have
36 very few tree species and less variety of insects, fungi,
37 animals, plants and birds. This is due not only to the
38 character of commercial plantations but also to damaging
39 techniques of forest management. The effects, for example,
40 of planting non-native species, the age uniformity of the
41 trees, the clear cutting, the use of machinery and the
42 removal of decaying trees all contributed to the damage to
43 the forests, on top of the fact that it was also a
44 mono-culture plantation."
45
46 One thing that I quote him directly, he said, "In 1989,
47 1990" -- at the time of the alleged libel -- "there was
48 virtually no concern by government and forest industry for
49 ecological sustainability." The point he was making was
50 that whilst some problems are now being recognised this has
51 only just started to have any effect on the forest floor,
52 as he called it - the forest floor, i.e., in reality, the
53 authorities have been forced to become aware of the need to
54 rectify the problems that the forest industry was causing,
55 and that is only now beginning to have some kind of effect
56 on the ground.
57
58 Mr. Hopkins outlined some particular environmental problems
59 in countries which provided the source for McDonald's
60 packaging in North America and Europe. Obviously, we did
