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Sound & Fair Campaign
The Sound & Fair Blackwood Conservation Project has launched a partnership with Just Forests, an Irish non-governmental organisation, to raise awareness of the availability of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified African blackwood, which is widely used in traditional Irish musical instruments.
The Sound & Fair campaign aims to realise a sustainable trade in African blackwood through a fully-certified chain of custody linking village communities in Tanzania to woodwind instrument-makers and musicians here in Ireland.
This partnership will be realized through Just Forests' newly established Just Music Project.
IMAGES:
1. Villagers load a blackwood log on a waiting truck
2. A magnificent African blackwood log use in the making beautiful wood-wind instruments.
Tom Roche, Director of Just Forests says: “For Just Forests this is a dream come true. We are delighted to partner with Sound & Fair in this very practical project through our Just Music initiative. This partnership will engage Irish musicians and Irish musical instrument makers with our fight against poverty and un-fair forest exploitation.”
The world’s first harvest of FSC-certified African blackwood was carried out in December 2009 in a Village Land Forest Reserve managed by Kikole village, southern Tanzania, under the guidance of the Mpingo Conservation Project. Kikole received a payment of around £1,200stg (€1400) in return for 15m3 of African blackwood, a sum 400 times greater more than they would have received before FSC-certification.
STOP PRESS STOP PRESS The wood was processed at an FSC-certified sawmill in Tanzania and arrived in the UK in early October 2010.
