1. Background to Forest Certification
HJ van Hensbergen
SSC Forestry

2. Certification
• What is certification?
An assurance mechanism
to substantiate a claim.
• University Certificate is
used to prove that a
person has received the
stated education.
• Medical Certificate is
used to verify that a
person is too sick to work.

3. Who can certify?
• Anybody!!!
• Self certification
• Peer group certification
(medical, legal, professional foresters in the US.)
• National certfication (BSA, SABS, SAQA)
• International certification (EQMS, ISO, CE)
• Certification should be credible.
– Nowadays anybody can buy a PhD certificate from a
variety of unregistered universities for less than $100
dollars on the internet. It is a waste of $99.50 because
for 50c you can print your own with the same level of
credibility.

4. Origins of Forest Certification
• Certification introduced in response to
unsustainable harvesting of old growth forests.
– Ghana loss of 80% of tropical high forest in 50 years.
– Phillipines converted from major exporter to major
importer of timber in 30 years.
• Major issues include loss of biodiversity, unethical
treatment of indigenous peoples, sustainability of
production.
– Amazonian Indians.
– Karen of Malaya & Burma
– Spotted owl.

5. The trigger to certification.
• Timber boycotts &
protests.
– NGOs saw these as
ineffective
– Retailers were concerned
by the effect on customers.
• Home Depot, Staples.
• NGOs saw government
led efforts as ineffective.

6. Failed International Efforts
• UNCED Rio 1992
– Convention on forests
• Montreal Process
– Santiago declaration on criteria and indicators. Boreal and
Temperate Forests. Reporting System. (Not a set of instructions on
how to stop forest loss.)
• Helsinki Process
– Sustainable use of European forests
• ITTA, ITTO
– Corruption in governments
• TFAP, UN, FAO
– Institutional Failure

7. Creation of the FSC in 1993/94
• Alliance of NGOs and Big Businesses
– Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF, B&Q, Home
Depot and Others.
• Objectives
– To promote sustainable and ethical forest management.
– To promote the use of wood as an environmentally
sustainable ‘Green’ raw material in the competition
with unsustainable resources like
Oil, Cement, Coal, Metals.

8. What is the FSC?
• International NGO
• Membership Organisation
– Institutional and Individual Members.
• FSC International Centre (Bonn)
– FSC Board
• FSC Secretariat
• FSC AS
• FSC GD
• FSC National Initiatives
– Develop National Standards
– Support FSC in the country

9. How to achieve this
• Develop a system which gives forest
derived products from well managed forests
a market advantage over the alternatives.
• Develop a system which protects dealers in
sustainable forest products from unfounded
criticism of their practices from Social and
Environmental NGOs.

10. Two Strategic Tools
• Development of Standards for Sustainable
forest management.
– Define SFM at the level of the FMU.
• Develop a system of Certification to recognise
forest managers who are practicing SFM
according to the requirements of the standard.
– Independent third party auditing and emission of
compliance certificates.

11. Purpose of Certification.
• The purpose depends on who you
are, relative to the process.
– The certifying authority.
– The certifying agency.
– The business to be certified.
– The consumer of the certified good.

12. Forest Certification Authorities
• Rainforest Alliance (Smartwood).
• Soils Association (Woodmark).
• Forestry Stewardship Council.
• ISO (14000 Series).
• CertforChile
• CSA
• Swiss Wood (Comite de Bois Suisse)
• Plus Forest
• And more than 150 more

13. Certifying Agencies
• Soils Association (Woodmark)
• Societe Generale de Surveillance
• Scientific Certification Systems
• Rainforest Alliance
• IMO
• SKAL
• SABS
• CertforChile

14. The Business to be certified.
• Forest Producers (Forest Management & COC & CW)
– Timber
– NTFP
• Primary converters (COC & CW)
– Pulp mills
– Primary saw mills – wet mills
• Secondary converters (COC & CW)
– Dry mills
– Paper mills
– Cartonboard mills
• Manufacturers (COC & CW)
– Furniture
– Wallpaper

15. Consumers
• Primary Consumer Groups
– Group of ‘95 companies in the UK
• Individual Primary consumers.
– IKEA (1m cu.m. solid 3m cu.m. composites)
–B&Q
– Home Depot
• End users
– Joe Public
– Government Procurement Agencies
• Local & National

16. What’s in it for me?
• Certifying Authority
– Improvement in the management of forests.
– Avoiding compliance/Association with competing
schemes.
• Certifying Agency (Accredited Certifier/Auditor)
– Money.
• The Certified Business
– Market Share, Image, Higher prices for products???
• The consumer.
– The feelgood factor, No requirement for due diligence.

17. What is certified?
• ‘Forest Management’ certification.
– It is the management of the forest that is
certified.
– The forest itself is not certified.
– Products coming from a forest where the
management is certified may be sold with the
FSC label.

18. Who gets certified?
• Managers of
– Individual Forests FMUs
– Individual processing plants
– Parts of companies
– Companies nationally
– Companies internationally
• Group certification for small producers.
• SLIMF certification

19. Chain of Custody
• System for verifying to the consumer that a labelled product
originates from a certified forest.
• System to prevent fraudulent use of the FSC label.
• Not a system to track timber. Information about the precise
origin of the timber is lost when it is passed to another link in
the supply chain.

20. Certifying chains of custody.
• Chain of custody certification.
– Pure chain of custody.
• Certification based on physical separation of
certified from non certified materials during
processing.
– Mixed Sources (certified and uncertified
products)
• Based on accounting for volumes of inputs and
outputs.
– Proportional certification for mixed
products, i.e. partially recycled paper.

21. Limits to Chain of Custody
• An FSC label informs consumer that the source of
the timber (or NTFP) is from a certified forest.
• The label does not contain information about
which certified forest it comes from.
– Generally it is not possible to obtain this information
from the system.
• Some FSC labelled products will contain material
from many certified forests.

22. FLEGT Timber tracking and COC
• Fundamental difference between timber tracking
and FSC COC control.
• For timber tracking knowledge of the origin and
location of every log or even piece is important.
• For COC only risks of mixing, or substitution of
certified and uncertified timber is important.
• Requirements for timber tracking systems are
theoretically much more strict than requirements
for FSC COC systems.