BIARRITZ.- A documentary about the Swedish giant Ikea, presented this week at the Fipadoc festival in Biarritz, denounces the intensive exploitation of the world’s forests by the furniture manufacturer.
Ikea, the lord of the fort (Ikea, the lord of the forests), by Marianne Kerfriden and Xavier Deleu, will premiere on February 28 on the Franco-German television network Arte.
In Romania, Poland, Sweden, Brazil and New Zealand, the authors spoke with activists outraged by the exploitation of wood, as well as with representatives of this vital industry for Ikea, which had a turnover of 44 billion dollars in 2023. The film was selected in the Impact category of the International Documentary Festival (FIPADOC) dedicated to human rights, social justice and the environment held in the city in southwestern France.
“We are here to contribute our grain of sand. But we journalists are not the only ones, we come after the citizens and the NGOs that have worked” to identify the exploited areas and document the logged areas, declared Xavier Deleu.
The investigation by the media outlet Disclose, co-producer of the documentary, is the continuation of another published in 2023, focused on the trafficking of oak trees from France to China.
That investigation made it possible to trace Ikea subcontractors “who use forced labor in prisons and penal colonies in Belarus,” Disclose said.
“We told ourselves that we had to go deeper. It was quickly the environmental angle that seemed relevant to us because a tree cut down every two seconds just for the needs of Ikea is enormous,” said Marianne Kerfriden.
ecological footprint
The documentary analyzes the transition: “from a time in which we did not ask ourselves about the ecological footprint of our purchases, to another in which we can no longer buy without asking where the product comes from, under what conditions it was made and what environmental impact it has. “Deleu stated.
“A tree plantation is not a forest,” Kerfriden noted, pointing out that there are virtually no primary forests left in Europe.
“They have all disappeared, with the exception of the Bialowieza forest in Poland,” he said.
In addition to the trees, the film also examines the fate of indigenous peoples, such as the Sami, reindeer herders who see the food for their animals disappear in Lapland; or the Maori of New Zealand, expelled from their lands by tree planting projects intended, according to the authors, to ensure the carbon neutrality of the Swedish giant.
Ikea did not want to speak before the cameras, according to Kerfriden.
However, the group communicated in writing to the authors of the documentary that: “before any forest management intervention” it carries out a “thorough evaluation of the potential impact on the environment” and takes “sufficient measures to ensure that it is avoided, controlled and “mitigates soil erosion.”
FUENTE: AFP
