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Article

31 May 2017

Author:
Adria Vasil, Now Think Free

Greenpeace's battle royal over the boreal

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Can you judge a book by the paper it's printed on? According to Greenpeace's latest report, Clearcutting Free Speech, that page-turner you're reading may not only be razing forests, but also silencing logging critics...

Greenpeace charges that Resolute is trying to sue the group "out of existence" with its latest lawsuit...Considering the U.S. law the company is using against the org was set up to prosecute organized crime, Resolute's suit amounts to some pretty extraordinary legal manoeuvring...

The...company alleges Greenpeace's "Resolute: forest destroyer" campaign wasn't just malicious and defamatory, but has "fraudulently induced many millions of dollars in donations from regular working-class people who have been duped about Greenpeace and Resolute, and, most important, duped into believing their donations were preventing forest loss, mitigating climate change, saving caribou and helping Indigenous peoples." Greenpeace does admit that in 2012, the group inaccurately reported that Resolute logged in areas that were off-limits under the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA).

Greenpeace isn't the only environmental organization questioning Resolute's forestry practices.The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has permanently terminated three of Resolute's sustainability certificates, and Resolute has since ditched its 2010 commitment to certify 80 per cent of its forest products with FSC.

Lauren Regan, executive director of the Oregon-based Civil Liberties Defense Center, says it's highly doubtful Resolute's fraud and racketeering charges have a chance of sticking...But she doesn't think it was necessarily Resolute's intention to win its case against Greenpeace so much as to intimidate the environmental group into shutting up.

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