Why Journalism Matters
Disclose investigative journalists lift the lid on Ikea and Decathlon while Reporters without Borders celebrates victories in its war against state censorship
6 minute read
Better everyday life for everyone— at the cost of a tree every two seconds
“Buying farms for the purpose of making your company look as though it is more environmentally sustainable… It’s only sustainable for your balance sheet. It’s not sustainable for our communities. It’s not sustainable for our society. And it’s also not sustainable for the planet.”
—Kerry Worsnop, New Zealand farmer and campaigner
These days you have to live in a very remote part of the world to escape the influence of multinational corporations and their brands.
The global village foretold in the 1960s is now an accepted feature of everyday life in the 21st century— expedited exponentially by the growth of the Big Tech firms who provide the platform for establishing the whole planet as a marketplace.
There can be little doubt that the most well known of these firms exercise a mesmeric effect on modern consciousness through their very ubiquity and economic impact— all supported by sophisticated advertising and promotion.
Fierce loyalty
Some brands garner fierce loyalty because they are reliable in giving the customer what they want (or crave). In addition, whenever possible they seek to convince us that they align with our values, and are acting on our behalf when it comes to environmental impact or defending human rights, including the rights of those who work for them or their suppliers.
One such company, blessed with a benevolent reputation, is Ikea, the Swedish-based house wares and furniture giant that operates in 60 countries around the world. Their public voice constantly emphasises their efforts to protect the environment while providing affordable products that make our lives more pleasant and comfortable.
As they proclaim on their website:
“We're on a mission to create a better everyday life for people all over the world, and we take our responsibility seriously in the local communities where we're present. We want to help build a society that’s fairer and more equal and we want to do it through thoughtful and enduring actions.”
But the French investigative journalism outlet Disclose has been taking a closer look at what Ikea does around the world, particularly its impact on the world’s forests. Its revelations show the company to be more of a predator of the world’s forest resources than an enlightened guardian.
In fact, how environmentally responsible can a company be that uses an entire tree every two seconds?
This rate of consumption is not altogether surprising when you consider that in 2023 860m customers visited one of Ikea’s 300 stores. That’s one in nine human beings on earth.
1200 suppliers
Also bear in mind that Ikea works with 1200 different suppliers around the world who make 90 per cent of its products, and 60 per cent of those products are made from wood.
That makes Ikea the world’s largest consumer of wood, using roughly one per cent of all the wood produced every year.
For Disclose, filmmakers Marianne Kerfriden and Xavier Deleu traced the multinational’s supply chain. Their investigation took them from Sweden to New Zealand, via Brazil and Poland, to meet timber industry experts, activists and citizens committed to protecting their forests. Their documentary (The Lord of the Forests)has recently been released and is free to watch on the Disclose website or on youtube, with English subtitles.
They conclude that Ikea’s main commitment is to greenwashing, describing it as the Swedish ‘ogre’.
Let’s start with New Zealand.
According to Disclose since 2021, the Swedish multinational has bought more than 23,000 hectares of land in New Zealand to plant pine trees.
Disclose reports: “ It aims to increase its furniture production while pledging to offset its CO2 emissions. But Maori communities Disclose has spoken to say this is greenwashing.”
Despite the fact that it emitted 24m tonnes of CO2 in 2023, the firm has pledged to have “a positive climate footprint in 2030” and become carbon neutral by 2050.
It intends to do this, in part, using Carbon Credits (See WJM March 5), the contested system that offsets the polluting emissions of large companies by incentivising them to invest in forests that naturally absorb CO2
(The greenwashing strategy embraced by most firms is proving untenable on a global scale: it would mean using all arable land on the planet to offset current carbon emissions, says Oxfam who believe that the top priority is to reduce emissions.)
By planting radiata pine trees, which grow rapidly, Ikea expects New Zealand to become its main carbon credit reserve within the next few years.
But Ikea is careful not to mention that this is taking place with disregard for local people and ecosystems.
In order to grow trees, the multinational is planning to raze farmland to the ground in Huiarua and Matanui despite the fact that several families live and work there. It has already planned to eliminate 11 farms in the region with local meadows and vegetation replaced with identical rows of pines.
“If Ikea genuinely want wood, they are more than welcome to partner with pre-existing forest loggers and they can even buy pre-existing forests, but they’re not interested in wood,” says Kerry Worsnop a local farm manager and rural advocate. “They’re interested in the investment profile of planting farmland and pine trees because it provides a net climate positive picture that they can sell to the consumers.”
“Buying farms for the purpose of making your company look as though it is more environmentally sustainable… It’s only sustainable for your balance sheet. It’s not sustainable for our communities. It’s not sustainable for our society. And it’s also not sustainable for the planet,” says Worsnop.
“In an email to Disclose, Ikea writes that it is working ‘together with New Zealand’s Department of Conservation’ and that it is monitoring ‘the environment effect of [its] work, including on biodiversity and waterways’, The Swedish firm adds that it does not plant trees ‘on the most productive land’ it has bought.
“The Swedish giant’s insatiable appetite… even makes it grab forests that are a thousand years old and destroy native vegetation. Some 500 kilometres South of Auckland, the Ingka investment fund is planning to clear 8.5 hectares of kanuka shrub, commonly known as white tea tree,
“[The kanuka] is highly resistant to drought and strong winds, unlike radiata pines, which are vulnerable to increasingly extreme climate events such as Cyclone Gabrielle that hit New Zealand in February 2023. Three months after the storm, forest debris and uprooted trees still littered the ground and beaches, a hazard for boats and hikers.”
Multiple crimes
Meanwhile in Brazil Ikea’s main furniture manufacturer has committed multiple environmental crimes in recent years.
“[Ikea’s] main partner in Brazil has all the makings of an environmental criminal. Artemobili, the company that makes its furniture for the U.S. and European markets, was sued in 2018 and again in 2022 for multiple environmental crimes.
“On its 120,000-square-metre site, where gigantic hangars stand next to pine and eucalyptus trunks, Artemobili has buried large quantities of toxic waste, according to the state environment police force, who inspected the premises in November 2018. In an ‘area of soft soil,’ inspectors noted, “residues were observed on the surface such as plastics, paint cans, sawdust and wood sanding dust.”
There are also stories about Ikea sourcing wood from illegal/unregulated logging operations in Rumania, Ukraine and Russia before the invasion of Ukraine.
And in 2022 Disclose discovered that several Belarusian companies that have worked for Ikea over the past ten years use forced labour in penal colonies where political prisoners are held, and where torture and deprivation are practiced.
The Baggebo bookcase, the Kullen chest of drawers and the Brimness bed are flagship IKEA items that until the beginning of the war in Ukraine, were made ‘in one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships, Belarus’.
Reference
Disclose; Ikea the Tree Hunter
Youtube version of the Lord of the Forests(with English subtitles)
4 minute read
Decathlon makes use of a shell company and a foreign subsidiary to continue secret sales to Russia
Ikea is not the only multinational firm that has been the subject of Disclose’s attention. They have also been looking in to the more shadowy aspects of the operations of French sporting goods multinational, Decathlon.
The French NGO investigative outlet has discovered that Decathlon has set up a shell company in Dubai and a subsidiary in Singapore as part of an ‘opaque’ system to continue selling its products in Russia, circumventing global sanctions since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
As Disclose reporter Pierre Leibovici writes: ”… although it announced its departure from the country Internal documents seen by Disclose reveal that the multinational has pocketed at least $12m thanks to this secret contract.
“The departure was brutal. On March 29 2022, a month after the war started in Ukraine, Decathlon announced it was putting an end to its activities in Russia… the firm’s departure was formalised in October 2023, with the sale of its 60 stores to a local buyer, the Desport brand. Officially, Decathlon’s presence in Vladimir Putin’s Russia was history. Officially only.”
But Disclose used internal company documents, open-source videos and interviews with former employees to uncover Decathlon’s activities.
“I immediately realised that this was a secret project.” says a former employee, who was in contact for a long time with Decathlon’s subcontractors in Asia. “We were not allowed to talk about it with our colleagues. For those of us in the know, using the word ‘Russia’ was banned. We had to use a code name: Sports_R.”
How does the system work?
First divert some products initially intended for European stores, as evidenced by an email sent out in September 2023 by a Decathlon production manager: “For orders meant to be sent to Europe, please put some aside for Russia”. The production manager added that he had got “full support from Jean-Marc Lemière”, who is none other than the group’s chief financial officer. Disclose contacted Jean-Marc Lemière but received no response.”
Former employee
A former Decathlon employee described the Dubai company, Phenix Ltd. in Dubai as a ‘ decoy’. Disclose discovered that Phenix had all the hallmarks of a shell company. “No website, no recorded employees on the internet and only one contact listed on the Dubai trade register: that of Sun Dubai, a firm specialising in the creation of offshore companies.”
The internal source explained: “Containers of Decathlon products sent from Bangladesh never left Dubai airports. They were immediately sent on to Moscow.”
Disclose discovered an internal logistics table from October 23 that made reference to Kalenji running jackets, Wedze ski jackets and Quechua trousers and shoes, all flown from Bangladesh to Russia, via Dubai. Tens of thousands of goods are involved.
When challenged by Disclose the company issued a statement that contradicted the group’s official position.
“ When Disclose contacted Decathlon about the continuation of trade with Russia, the company stated that it is ‘doing everything possible to put an end to the resale of [its] products on Russian Federation territory’. This is a reference to its clothes being sold illegally by individuals on Russian e-commerce sites. But no mention of the goods that the group itself ships to Vladimir Putin’s country. Decathlon did not respond to our request for further information.”
Bangladesh is not the only country supplying Decathlon’s goods to Sports R. Its offices in Vietnam and China have also been involved. These three countries are the base for most of Decathlon’s manufacturing which are distributed under 36 sub-brands.
EU sanctions
Kevin Lefebvre, an economist with the Centre d’études prospectives et d’informations internationales [Centre for Prospective Studies and International Information] told Disclose without commenting specifically on Decathlon that “86% of textile products exported by France to Russia before the war in Ukraine could not have left the country now because of EU sanctions”.
On 25 November, the first Desport store opened on the outskirts of Moscow to applause and cheers from employees. The shop sign – white capital letters on a blue background – is very similar to Decathlon’s. Desport has since opened 16 other stores, in Moscow and Saint Petersburg..
Leibovici adds: “Quechua, B’twin, Rockrider, Wedze, Arpenaz, Forclaz: the Decathlon brands can be seen in several videos posted by Russian Internet users on the Vkontakte social network, as they wander along the aisles of Desport stores.”
Reference
Disclose: Decathlon’s Secret Project
3 minute read
RSF restores access to independent media in a world hungry for reliable reporting—and the truth
With little fanfare but a great deal of pride the press freedom NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) based in Paris celebrates some landmarks in its successful war against the state censorship that blights so much press freedom around the world.
RSF decided to showcase their progress on World Day Against Cyber Censorship, marked on March 12.
RSF unveiled the latest figures from its Operation Collateral Freedom, which is now unblocking online access to more than 100 banned media outlets in 32 countries, a 20% increase on last year.
Launched in 2015 to combat online media censorship, Operation Collateral Freedom is now at work in Russia, Belarus, China, Myanmar and several African countries including Togo and Mali.
17 Russian media outlets
Thanks to Operation Collateral Freedom, no fewer than 17 Russian media outlets have been unblocked, including Holod, an independent news platform, and Kavkaz Uzel, a site that specialises in covering the Caucasus.
The Russian-language services of the French broadcaster RFI and German broadcaster Deutsche Welle have also been unblocked, as has one of the leading independent Russian news outlets Meduza.io, now based in the Latvian capital, Riga.
In early 2023, RSF also embarked on a major operation, bypassing China's Great Firewall, to unblock many of the Chinese news and information sites that have been banished from the national Internet. A first wave of websites has already been unblocked.
Nine sites specializing in reporting human rights abuses, including Civil Rights & Livelihood Watch, Weiquanwang and the Tibetan exile media outlet, Tibet Post International, are back online. Other Chinese media will soon be unblocked and their URLs will be made public as they come back online.
The operation is also reaching other countries hostile to press freedom such as Iran, where access to the BBC News Persian website has been unblocked.
To do this, RSF has created a total of 480 mirror sites, that is to say, exact copies of the blocked sites, which are placed on RSF servers and are constantly synced with the originals.
RSF’s objective is to counter online censorship and the amplification of disinformation by making independent media more accessible in their countries of origin.
“Operation Collateral Freedom has just advanced to a new stage and is unfortunately now having to assist a growing number of media outlets. Access to online information is worsening everywhere in the world, especially in authoritarian countries, led by Russia and China. The creation of mirror sites completes the range of solutions provided by RSF for accessing online information and enabling media outlets to quickly reconnect with their public.”
Christophe Deloire
RSF secretary-general
RSF has also recently announced that its unprecedented satellite project Svoboda (freedom in Russian) is now in operation. Nine independent Russian-language TV and radio channels are currently being broadcast by satellite to Russia, Ukraine’s occupied territories and the Baltic countries.
This constitutes a huge advance in RSF’s fight against Russian propaganda. No fewer than 4.5 million homes in the Russian Federation and around 800,000 homes in Ukraine’s occupied territories will now be able to access freely reported, independent and reliable news and information via their TV sets, without any additional equipment.
Six to nine per cent
Only six to nine percent of the adult population in Russia has access to reliable news reporting. RSF is dedicated to increasing that number so that the Russian population can secure the tools to preserve their freedom of opinion.
"Our Svoboda package is proud to be the first to carry DW's new Russian channel. We envisioned Svoboda as a leading resource for independent Russian-language news content. This dream is coming true”.
Christophe Deloire
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