Forest certification

Forest Certification is seen as a market-driven mechanism to encourage forest enterprises to follow sustainable forestry practices, that pay equal attention to environmental/ ecological, social and economic sustainability criteria. There is a confusing choice of FC systems available, from autonomous to state-led. The paper discusses the approach that will be suitable for India.

With an estimated 558 million people managing 1 billion hectares of agroforests worldwide, TFT’s new guide to working with smallholder agroforest managers is aimed at empowering communities to successfully launch sustainable forest businesses.

Simply written, with multiple illustration and graphics, the handbook is a comprehensive guide for non-profits, businesses, government agencies and community organizations who want to develop a FSC group certificate for smallholder agroforests. The handbook includes:

* step-by-step guidance for many of the most common challenges smallholders face in developing a wood business and becoming certified
* case studies, templates and simple tools and techniques that will be useful for readers who are just beginning a community agroforest program, or are in the early stages of development
* key questions to ask, and best practices for building long-term community agroforest program
* explanations of common technical forestry terms and easy to understand examples
* appendices with sample documents and links to additional resources on the web

Comprehensive, pragmatic, realistic, and in an easy-to-use format, the Community Forest Handbook addresses what group managers need to know.

Written by R. Barr, A. Busche, M. Pescott, A. Wiyono, A. Eka Putera, A. Victor, Bahrun, N. Fauzan, S. Prantio, and U. Karnanto
Copyright © 2012 TFT

This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.  Feel free to share, copy, and transmit this work.

The Minister of Forestry should cancel the concession permit of PT Diamond Raya Timber and the Indonesian Ecolabelling Institute must revoke its certificate of sustainable production forest management.” This demand was tabled in 2002 by the coordinating team of the Forest-Dependent Communities Development Program covering seven villages within PT Diamond Raya Timber’s concession area.

Heiko Liedeker, Executive Director of the Forest Stewardship Council, disagreed with the proposition: “Diamond Raya Timber is understood to be one of the most progressive concessions in Indonesia, but there is no pretence that it is perfect.”

These statements exemplify the controversy surrounding the certification of Diamond Raya’s forest management practices. Several parties have contested the company’s certification since the concession first received a stamp of approval from the Indonesian Ecolabelling Institute in 1999, while others laud Diamond Raya for its positive efforts toward forest management. The tension reflects the spectrum of management philosophies, ranging from preservationist perspectives to beliefs that forest conservation must necessarily encompass strong human interaction — including logging.

The adoption of green manufacturing practices by the Malaysian wooden furniture industry is limited as is shown by a questionnaire-based survey of wooden furniture manufacturers. The lack of price premium for green furniture products and the high cost involved in adopting such practices have been identified as the major restraints. Currently most green manufacturing practices are related to the use of environmental-friendly materials.

There is an increasing tendency for forest product firms worldwide to adopt sound environmental management practices by voluntarily agreeing to have their forest practices certified by third parties. Using a simple model of profit maximization, we illustrate that the puzzling emergence of this non-state, self-imposed governance structure is compatible with firms' profit motives. An empirical model using firm data from

Diante da deflagração de uma crise ambiental global, anunciada a partir da década de 1960, emergiu a necessidade e a oportunidade de criação de novos instrumentos de gestão e de autogestão, que resultaram nas certificações e nos selos ambientais. Porém, apesar do aumento no uso de selos ambientais, há pouco entendimento sobre as dinâmicas sociais das quais eles emergem, o seu significado perante uma governança global e sua influência na gestão ambiental empresarial. Novas formas de organização social resultaram em novos espaços de diálogo e aproximação entre os atores do movimento ambientalista e os protagonistas do desenvolvimento econômico. Esta tese se insere neste contexto e investiga a capacidade do movimento ambientalista em alterar paradigmas de gestão ambiental empresarial. O recorte estabelecido foi a participação do movimento no desenvolvimento de padrões privados de certificação. Um resgate histórico permitiu compreender a evolução da gestão ambiental privada e a participação do movimento ambientalista na governança ambiental por meio da atuação do terceiro setor. Foram analisados três sistemas internacionais de certificação ambiental: a ISO 14.001, o FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) e o LIFE (Lasting Initiative for Earth), interpretados a partir da análise documental. A influência de instrumentos privados na alteração de práticas produtivas foi avaliada por meio da percepção de gestores ambientais. A interface dos instrumentos privados com a governança e a gestão ambiental foi investigada através de entrevistas com informantes qualificados. Identificou-se que a participação do movimento ambientalista vem legitimando novos padrões de certificação e influenciando instrumentos privados de gestão ambiental por meio da inserção de novos elementos aos seus conteúdos convencionalmente técnicos e ambientais, como novos critérios ecológicos, sociais e culturais. A aplicação dos instrumentos privados apresenta na percepção dos gestores três tipos de alcance: a) técnicos/ambientais: reduzindo a poluição gerada pelos processos produtivos, aumentando a ecoeficiência, reduzindo o uso de recursos naturais e conservando a biodiversidade; b) de sensibilização do público interno: visando o engajamento individual e coletivo em relação à causa ambiental; e c) de cunho econômico: por meio do reconhecimento público da empresa no mercado, junto aos acionistas, clientes e fornecedores, e da redução de custos. Em relação à governança ambiental a valorização da participação na legitimação de padrões privados de gestão reforça o fenômeno do envolvimento dos atores civis e privados na arena global, como característica da transição de governo para governança.

This report for Rainforest Foundation Norway provides an overview and analysis of recent research on the viability of socio-environmentally sustainable logging for commercial purposes in tropical rainforests.
Key questions we wanted to explore in this study included: What are the environmental effects of so-called “sustainable” industrial logging in intact rainforest areas, and to what extent is it possible to extract timber from primary rainforests without significantly disturbing and over time degrading the forest ecosystem regarding biodiversity, climate resilience and carbon storage?
This report examines what is known regarding the impacts of “status quo” industrial logging, including on biodiversity, biomass/carbon, ecosystem resiliency, and timber yield. It then turns to examine whether reduced impact logging (RIL) and forest certification improve outcomes for these same values. Based on these findings, an overall determination is made regarding what constitutes “sustainable forest management” (SFM) in the tropics.
The report finds that industrial logging, even though it is done “selectively” due to the low density of commercially viable trees, results in a large impact to the remaining forest. While some of this occurs immediately during logging and construction of related infrastructure, there are also secondary impacts that can be even more significant. Decreased ecosystem resilience and removal of moisture-retaining canopy results in disruption of ecosystem processes and increased incidence of fire.

This paper examines mechanisms based on terrestrial CO2 sinks proposed in the Kyoto Protocol, and more particularly forests. After a review of the most recent scientific evidence and of the consequences of global warming, we highlight the importance of tropical forests in the preservation of biodiversity. We then review current forestry carbon sequestration projects and argue for the need to inscribe them in the larger context of sustainable development and poverty alleviation. Our policy recommendations include accepting only narrowly defined LULUCF activities, assisting developing countries in the development of comprehensive “green” accounting systems, compensating developing countries for the preservation of tropical areas, and extending forest certification programs. Resume Dans ce papier, nous examinons les mécanismes de captation du CO2 proposés dans le Protocole de Kyoto, et plus particulièrement ceux qui mettent en oeuvre des forêts. Nous commençons par résumer les connaiss...

The main objective of this thesis research is to investigate the relationship between forest permits and deforestation in Indonesia. Furthermore, to better understanding their associations, roles of the Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) certification and the improvement of oil palm productivity to mitigate deforestation are also analysed. Reducing deforestation in Indonesia contributes to climate change mitigation at a globally and regionally significant scale (Busch et al. 2015). Some policies and actions have been undertaken by the government to reduce forest cover loss and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from forestry sector, such as the moratorium forest policy, illegal logging prevention, the preparation for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), SFM, forest and peat land fire prevention, forest land use boundary and customary enforcement, One Map Initiative, and so forth. However, deforestation in Indonesia remains high, in terms of the amount of area and rate. The Global Forest Change (GFC) or Hansen dataset (Hansen et al. 2013a), at which the present analysis is based on, reports that forest cover has been reduced from around 0.75 million ha in 2001 and nearly 1.18 million ha in 2005 to 2.03 million ha in 2012, or on average nearly 1.30 million ha/year during this period. The recent data from the Ministry of Forestry reports that the rate of deforestation was around 0.61 million hectares in 2011-2012 (MoF 2014a).The majority of forests in Indonesia is state forest, managed under concession or permit system (Karsenty et al. 2008). Multifarious types of forest permits are issued, especially for commercial purposes. Two major permits are the logging permit (LP) for productive (high tree cover) production forest, where permitted business entities may harvest timber selectively referred as, and the plantation conversion permits (PCP) for unproductive production forest, where permitted business entities must first do planting and then harvest the timber when the planted trees are mature. In recent decades, although forest permit system has been criticized because of their damaging environmental impacts (Gautam et al. 2000; Dennis et al. 2008; Amacher et al. 2012), the causality and the association between forest permits and deforestation remain inconclusive. By expecting a positive correlation for LP and a negative association for PCP, therefore, the first analysis of this thesis is to estimate impacts of forest permits on deforestation.Within forest permit system, global society has put a strong attention for unsustainable logging practices (Dudley et al. 1995; Sierra 2001; Gullison 2003; Damette and Delacote 2011). To counteract environmental issues surrounding timber harvesting, such SFM guidance or practices have been developed and promoted for decades (Gullison 2003; Dennis et al. 2008). Indonesia has adopted, developed and promoted SFM since 1993, in the forms of the market-driven scheme and the domestic government-established scheme. Although it has been more than two decades, the domestic SFM certification scheme has not been analysed yet. The second research topic of this thesis aims at investigating this potential mitigation of the domestic SFM certification on deforestation reduction, expecting that it can significantly reduce deforestation.As forest resources decline, forest land will be likely to be converted to other land uses. The government has established the Convertible Forest that can be legally but limitedly converted to other non-forest land uses (such as infrastructure provision, agriculture development and mining). Forest conversion is also stimulated by other factors, especially higher rent values of other non-forest land uses. Rapid agricultural expansion, especially oil palm (Casson 2000; MoF 2008; Hansen et al. 2009), has been cited to be one of the major causes of forest conversion that bring significant pressures on forest (Margono et al. 2012; Gaveau et al. 2013; Abood et al. 2014; Lee et al. 2014b; Busch et al. 2015). To mitigate deforestation in oil palm development, increasing oil palm productivity has been proposed by scholars and adopted by the government and the international development institutions (WB 2011; Miyake et al. 2012; Hoffmann et al. 2014). However, their relationships are mixed in which improved oil palm could be potential or risks for the forest. Hence, the last analysis of the thesis is to quantitatively investigate impacts of oil palm expansion and productivity on deforestation in Indonesia, expecting that oil palm expansion accelerates deforestation while oil palm productivity mitigates deforestation.The main data of this thesis is based on the first version of GFC or Hansen dataset 2000-2012 (Hansen et al. 2013a). In the analysis, deforestation is measured by annual forest cover loss at current year in the period of 2000-2012. The first and the last analysis have been done with panel data at the provincial level, while the second analysis is at the forest unit level. By employing the fixed-effect estimation, the first analysis results in the insignificant sign of LP, but unfortunately PCP stimulates a greater forest cover loss. Unexpected results have also been revealed in the second analysis in which mitigating impacts of the certification of the domestic SFM on deforestation reduction cannot be robustly confirmed, but partially observed. The limited potential of this scheme is observed in the case of LP. Since the effects of the agricultural yield on deforestation is mediated through the agricultural area expansion, the Causal Mediation Analysis (Imai et al. 2010) is employed for the last analysis. Results show that both the oil palm productivity and the oil palm area have positive and significant impacts on deforestation. Approximately 54% of total effects of oil palm productivity on forest cover loss are mediated through the area expansion.Several results of this thesis` analysis have been in consistency with other empirical studies (an insignificant association between LP and deforestation, and a positive correlation between oil palm expansion and deforestation). However, results on PCP, the domestic SFM certification and the oil palm productivity have been on the contrary with the expectation and the current policies, in which the government has established and supported PCP, SFM and oil palm productivity to be some of mitigation actions to reduce deforestation. This thesis argues that the unexpected results of PCP and oil palm productivity are mainly due to the fact that most of PCP and oil palm plantation have been established on the forested areas (Koh and Wilcove 2008; Obidzinski and Chaudhury 2009; Carlson et al. 2012a). Hence, suspending new permits for PCP and oil palm plantation could be a temporary alternative policy to reduce deforestation in a short-term. However, it is highly recommended for the government to reposition their current policies by emphasizing on longer-term actions, such as redefining the current criteria of unproductive and forested areas, evaluating the current implementation of PCP, the oil palm plantation and the domestic SFM, and directing and incentivizing the development of oil palm on unproductive and non-forested areas. In sum, this thesis concludes that reducing deforestation has to take into account other non-forestry factors that potentially bring about crucial effects on deforestation.

The growing public interest in and global consciousness of environmental and social issues have intensified pressures on forest industry companies in their efforts to effectively balance potentially conflicting stakeholder demands. In this paper, we conceptually analyze corporate responsibility (CR) in forest-based industry by theoretically differentiating between three approaches driving CR: the “trade-off” hypothesis, the “profit-maximizing” corporate responsibility conjecture, and the “corporate social impact” hypothesis. We use a survey of existing studies to assess the current stage of CR adoption in forest-based industry and to form a basis for evaluating the wider importance of CR in business, as well as to formulate hypotheses for future research. In conclusion, companies covered in previous research in this study appear to have adopted CR activities mainly with the profit-maximizing assumption. As the continued growth of ethical markets and socially responsible investment (SRI) presents both a threat and an opportunity for forest industry companies, a lasting case for CR in business could only be made by embracing CR principles with radical changes in the fundamental values, policy principles and operational procedures through double-loop organizational learning.

Bamboo is emerging as an important substitute for wood and wood fiber. Although bamboo can be assimilated within existing forest certification mechanisms, there is growing controversy among experts regarding the applicability and efficacy of adopting such instruments. Through an accumulation of fieldwork, interviews, and discussions among experts between 2005 and 2014, this article analyzes the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, as well as proposals arising within the bamboo community. Through the lens of legitimacy, it analyzes stakeholders’ views
of the input legitimacy (processes) and output legitimacy (effectiveness) of FSC bamboo certification. It highlights the dissatisfaction with the third-party model for smallholders, as well the lack of ecological management gains within the FSC system. However, currently the bamboo communities of practice are divided about
ways to proceed regarding creating alternative approaches. At a macro level, it highlights current challenges regarding the need to facilitate new resources into already existing institutions.

WWF Malaysia (WWFM) have been promoting the application of timber certification since 1992 as it is a better alternative to tropical timber bans which was proposed to reduce tropical deforestation. As an organisation, WWFM has always been supporting efforts in improving forest management practices. As a commitment to this fact, WWFM has been a member of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) since its formation in 1993. WWFM has also been very much involved in the processes in moving towards improved forest management and forest certification in Malaysia. The recent formation of NTCC in 1999 provided further opportunities to participate more actively in the processes of forming a national standard in forest certification in Malaysia.

La certification « de bonne gestion forestière » tropicale indépendante a maintenant plus de 20 ans d'existence, si l'on considère que tout a commencé avec la création du Forest Stewardship Council (FSC, Conseil de Soutien de la Forêt) en 1993. Elle a souvent été accueillie avec un certain scepticisme, à cause du basculement Sud-Sud progressif du commerce des bois tropicaux (Buttoud et Karsenty, 2001), de la fragilité d'un instrument fondé exclusivement sur la confiance faute de consensus scientifique sur les « critères et indicateurs » de durabilité (Karsenty, Lescuyer & Nasi, 2004), ou parce qu'elle ne traite pas les facteurs extra-sectoriels et qu'elle contourne les États (Smouts, 2001). Elle est aussi critiquée par les conservationnistes dans la mesure où elle entérine l'exploitation industrielle de forêts anciennes (Freris et Laschefski, 2001), Les problèmes soulevés au début des années 2000 restent largement d'actualité, mais la certification, instrument de marché censé exprimer la « puissance du consommateur », est devenue, sous différentes formes, un sujet incontournable des débats forestiers. Aux certifications de « bonne gestion forestière » que veulent être le FSC ou le PEFC (né Pan-European Forest Certification scheme, devenu Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification ; Programme de reconnaissance des certifications forestières), se sont ajouté des certifications de légalité des bois exploités. Il est clair que la certification est devenue une institution, au sens sociologique d'une « forme sociale établie ». Si, à ses débuts, la certification indépendante était perçue par les États eux-mêmes comme une concurrence, voire une atteinte à leur souveraineté, le discours a changé. Les surfaces certifiées sont mises en avant par des gouvernements pour démontrer la bonne gestion de leurs forêts. En Malaisie et au Brésil, les gouvernements sont eux-mêmes les promoteurs de certifications nationales, plus contrôlables par leur administration. La « mauvaise gouvernance » n'empêche pas la certification des entreprises Un des débats récurrents est de savoir si la certification peut se développer et être efficace dans des pays tropicaux marqués avec un faible État de droit et une gouvernance insuffisante. Si l'on prend les surfaces certifiées de forêt naturelle tropicale, là où les questions de légitimité et les problèmes de gestion sont les plus aigus, on obtient le chiffre modeste de 7,8 millions ha ou 10 millions si on élargit aux forêts semi-naturelles, comprenant des parties reboisées (calcul basé sur les données du FSC). L'Afrique centrale est la région tropicale qui affiche les plus grandes surfaces de forêts naturelles certifiées FSC, avec 5,6 millions ha. Et ce au grand dam d'ONG radicales opposées à toute forme d'exploitation industrielle, qui tentent tout particulièrement de décrédibiliser les certifications de concessions opérant au Gabon, Congo et Cameroun.

Sustainable forest management (SFM) has remained at the forefront of forestry discus¬sions globally for several decades and is an important concept both for the forestry and forest products sectors. Because forests and societies are in constant flux, the criteria, indicators, and desired outcomes of SFM also remain moving targets—shifting as scientific knowledge improves, as technologies evolve, and as societal values change.  Thus, governance structure surrounding SFM is multilevel and complex.  As multi-stakeholder views of managing forests and forest resources have become prominent over the years, SFM has also evolved and adapted to meet these divergent interests. Similarly, globalization of forest sector operations has necessitated creation of transnational SFM initiatives to ensure conformity to the same standards across the value chain. In this chapter, we first start with providing a typology of various SFM-focused programs and policies that, we believe, capture the spectrum of SFM governance structures. We label them (1) private governance networks, (2) transnational regulatory policies, (3) transnational voluntary policies, (4) state-level regulatory policies, and (5) state-level voluntary policies. Within each category, we identify key examples of specific SFM policies/regulations and discuss them at some length. Second, we focus our discussion on the interaction among these various governance mechanisms. Finally, we conclude by suggesting that resources developed within private initiatives—particularly those addressing MRV (monitory, reporting, and verification) capacities—provide impor¬tant capabilities and opportunities to state-based and transnational policy makers attempt¬ing to regulate and incentivize sustainable forestry and forest products.

This research presents firstly the forest activity in Congo and secondly, some forest certification schemes exerted in Africa and in Congo, and explain how the Congolese government and these systems work together for a sustainable management of forest ecosystems in Congo. To do that we put the action on the involvement and the role of the Congolese government in this relationship. Congo is one of the countries that have always shown their will to sustainably manage their forest resources. The first forest management in Congo started in the early 1970s with the development of management plans focused on annual timber harvesting In 1974, the new Forest Code (Law No. 004/74 of 4 January 1974) transformed the Congolese forest legislation. Considered at the time of its promulgation as one of the most modern forest code in Central Africa, it defined the forest management unit (UFA), the maximum annual cut (VMA), the promotion of local processing, Atlas Forestier Interactif du Congo[2]. At present, the use of the forest domain is governed by Law No. 16/2000 of 20 November 2000 on the Forest Code [4].It takes into consideration that, go one hand, developments related to forest management and conservation of the environment occurred in recent years at the international level and, on the other hand, the new socio-political context of the Congo. The Forest Code confirms the policy of sustainable management of forest ecosystems, which guarantees sustained forest products production and ensures the conservation of biological diversity. In addition, the law stipulates that the transformation of the country's production should reach 85 percent Despite those efforts granted by the Congolese government, Congo still lacks sufficient operational schemes certification, so it is still an exclusive business to northern markets. The Congolese government has the merit to generate debate involving in the forest sector regarding the certification.

A study on the export performance of timber products certified under the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme (MTCS) was conducted from 2003 to 2015. The objectives were to analyse the trend and growth of certified timber products (CTP) and to determine the factors that influenced their export using Generalised Linear Models (GLM). The annual growth of CTP export had a fluctuating trend. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) within the study period was estimated at 31%. The average annual growth rate (AAGR) estimated using log-linear regression analysis was 22%. The primary markets for CTP export were European countries, accounting for nearly 83% of exports over the study period. The Netherlands seemed to be the main destination for almost half (40%) of the CTP. The major product was sawn timber (59%), followed by plywood (31%). GLM revealed that the export trend of CTPunder the MTCS increased with the number of Chain-of-Custody (CoC) certificate holders. More active involvement in the MTCS CoC certification scheme by industry players could promote the growth of Malaysia’s sustainable timber trade.

Forest certification has been so far described as a non-state, market-driven form of private governance developed by non-state actors. However, bureaucracies can influence the effects of these programs in many ways, using their competencies to either enhance or restrict non-state certification schemes. The objective of our work is to analyze the role state agencies played in the forest certification standard development processes in Argentina, including the related coalition building strategies. Our hypotheses are that forest certification is not an activity among merely private actors, but that state agencies do play a small but necessary role in creating favorable frame conditions, and in standard formulation and scheme establishment. Coalitions built around production-oriented state agencies and strong political sectors have a stronger influence in the formulation of standards of forest certification schemes than coalitions between conservation-oriented bureaucracies and environmental NGOs. In order to understand the process of standard formulation for FSC and PEFC in Argentina, data on the different schemes were collected from public statements from stakeholder organizations, written summaries of debates of schemes from both public meetings and meetings by the groups writing the standards, and statements from the agencies in charge of writing the standards. The results show that in Argentina, FSC was temporarily useful to the forestry sector and landowners as a quick solution and hence was supported even by utilitarian state agencies. In light of an evolving operational PEFC scheme four years later, this support by state agencies was dropped and shifted towards the more landowner-friendly PEFC. After this dynamic in the coalition building process, FSC was on a decline in Argentina.

The first part of this paper deals with the term of sustainable development as a most popular and important global trend for protecting the worlds eco system. The second part of the paper describes three most important standards for the certification of forest industry that is FCS, PEFC, and ISO 14000 certificate. Forest certification is a procedure in which impartial

Bosnia and Herzegovina is the last European country to host large tracts of virgin forests. Considering the high rate of environmental damage as well as social impact caused by intensive-scale commercial forest utilization after the 1992-1995 war, the paradigm of forest management in Bosnia and Herzegovina has to be shifted from sustainable resources oriented to conservation resources oriented. In simple words, forest management operations should be able to maintain the condition and function of forest as it is, moreover, forest ...