Auditing and Governance in the Forestry Industry: Between Protest and Professionalism

In the context of the recent debate that was stimulated by Sutton and Arnold's paper entitled "Toward a Framework for a Corporate Single Audit", this paper examines the impact of environmental audit and eco-labelling strategies on governance arrangements in the forestry industry. In particular, it shows how consumer-driven forest management audits sanctioned by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) could shift much of the responsibility for sustainable forest management from state bureaucracy to management control mechanisms within forest exploitation companies. The paper uses evidence from a case study of Leroy Gabon, a large Franco-German logging concession in the Congo basin rainforest, to analyse the impact of a third-party audit of forest management processes based upon FSC principles. The findings reveal tensions between claims to professionalism of the FSC (and one of its accredited auditors, i.e. Societe Generale de Surveillance) on the one hand, and sustainability concerns of stakeholders (notably representatives of indigenous people, environmental campaigners, Friends of the Earth, and Rainforest Coalition) on the other.