Beginning this year our Duoplank
Manufacturer Inpa Parket started a very special project in Bolivia: together
with thirty Indian families the company owns and runs over 26.000 hectare of
FSC-certified forest. In the just released newsletter "Good News!" from FSC-The
Netherlands Inpa director Arthur Hoetelmans explains more about this unique
joint-venture:
"We support the Indian community, named Cururu, of thirty families intensely.
For instance, we teach them how to use machinery and felling of trees. Based on
a sustainable method of course, in order for them to create an income from the
forest without destroying it. The wood they sell from it is sub-tropical and can
be used for furniture and flooring. The standard FSC-regulations are for this
project adjusted on one point: the Indians are
still allowed to hunt in the forest."
Inpa Parket joint FSC-The Netherlands in 1998 and has
been active in Bolivia for longer.
"It has always been our desire to do something
more for the local community. When we were offered a PSOM-subsidy for
investments in developing countries we decided to start this
project."
Inpa Parket now also works together with
two other Indian communities and the certifying of the project will be ready end
of 2008.
(news sources: Inpa, FSC-The Netherlands, Parketplein)