Ikea suppliers are deforesting the Carpathians:Greenpeace's complaint

Ikea returns to the center of the storm, after a final investigation by Greenpeace following which the environmental organization launched an unprecedented petition:“Ikea says that the home is the place where everything begins”, but we must prevent “old forests from ending up in our homes”.This is the slogan that revolves around the new collection of signatures of the environmentalist organization, founded on a latter investigation which notes how seven Romanian companies that work and produce furniture for the Swedish multinational appear to obtain their wood from some of the last old-growth forests in Europe, located in the country's Carpathians.These, specifically, are forests that should be particularly protected because not affected by human beings since ancient times, and therefore equipped with characteristics similar to ancient primary forests.Although they are in theory protected by EU legislation, the Romanian forests and their probable exploitation by Ikea are thus back at the center of attention, after years of reports and complaints that ended up buried under a general climate of silence.

The Greenpeace signature collection is aimed at Jon Abrahamsson Ring, CEO of Inter Ikea Group.“Our lives depend on a healthy nature, but the direction we have taken towards mass production and excessive consumption is leading to its destruction.And Ikea, the company of which you are CEO, is still part of the problem";so the environmental organization turns to the CEO of the Swedish multinational, asking that the company cut back on exploitation of Romanian ancient forests.The petition revolves around the last one investigation of Greenpeace itself, relating to the Romanian forests exploited by Ikea, drawn up on 10 April.After the investigation, compiled after a first-hand visit to the country's old-growth forests, the warehouses where the wood is transported and processed were identified, as were the furniture factories that are supplied.“Based on public information” Ikea is “the main customer of most of the furniture manufacturers indicated in the Greenpeace investigation” and “there is therefore a high probability that wood from old-growth forests and areas with high conservation value ends up in IKEA furniture sold in various EU countries, including Italy".According to Greenpeace, trees would grow in these forests, some of which are "'Natura 2000' protected areas, i.e. part of a European network of ecological sites designated for the conservation of biodiversity and habitats".aged between 120 and 180 years”.In short, their demolition would constitute significant environmental and landscape damage.

It's not the first time that Ikea ends up under investigation by newspapers and environmental associations. Already in 2021 the company had ended up at the center of a journalistic investigation that proved how its furniture was achieved thanks to the illegal logging of Siberian forests, while the previous year the false statements on the origin of the wood justified administrative criminal proceedings by the Federal Department of Economy (EAER) in Switzerland.And yet, it is since at least July 2015 that the multinational is at the center of the storm for the exploitation of the forests it uses as a source of wood supply, as revealed by an investigation by the newspaper Romania Insider, published in June 2016.

[by Dario Lucisano]