Forest Stewardship Certification

Principles and criteria:

Dr. Priydarshani TALGASWATTE
Director, Sri Lanka Standards Institution

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an international non profit organisation founded in 1953 to support environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests by establishing a worldwide standard of recognised and respected principles of Forest Stewardship.

It accredits certification organisations in order to assure the authenticity of their claims. The process of certification is generally initiated by forest owners and managers who request the services of a certification body.

It is broadly accepted that forest resources and associated lands should be managed to meet the social, economical, cultural and spiritual needs of the present and future generations.

In addition, the growing public awareness of forest destruction and degradation has led consumers especially in the developed countries to demand that their purchase of wood and other forest products will not contribute to this destruction, but help secure forest resources for the future.

In response to these demands, certification and self-certification programs of wood products have grown rapidly in the marketplace.

Forest plantations are forest established by planting and/or seeding in the process of aforestation or reforestation and consists of exotic or indigenous species, planted at regular spacing for the purpose of production of timber and other forest services.

Forest management is a series of productive forest management activities aimed at regulating the use of forest products and preventing the negative impacts of forest exploitations, through production, environmental and social management.

The process of managing permanent forest is to achieve clearly specified objectives of the top management with regard to the production of a continuous flow of desired products and services, without unwarranted reduction of its inherent value and future productivity and without undesirable effects on the physical and social environment. This is also called sustainable development.

Importance of Forest Stewardship Certification

Forest Stewardship Certification has formulated 10 main principles. The Principles and Criteria (P&C) apply to all tropical, temperate and boreal forests. Many of these P&C apply to plantations and replanted forests as well.

The P&C can be incorporated into evaluation systems and standards of all certification organisations seeking accreditation by FSC.

P&C are mainly designed for forests managed for the production of wood products but they are also equally applicable to non-timber products and other services. It is a complete package and shall be used with the FSC’s Statutes and Procedures.

It is known to FSC and the Certification Bodies that organisations can satisfy the P&C 100 per cent. However, major failures in any individual principle will normally disqualify a potential client from obtaining certification. Such decisions will be taken by the Certification Bodies, guided by the extent to which each criterion is satisfied, and by the importance and consequences of failures.

According to the standard, some flexibility will be allowed to cope with local circumstances. FSC principles enable the process of evaluating forests, forest plantations and other plantations (plantation is an intentional planting of a crop, on a large scale, usually maintained on economic bases), small holders of rubber and other woodlands or woodlots, to determine whether they are managed according to an agreed set of standards in order to promote environmentally sound, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of forests and also comply with requirements for chain of custody of timber and timber based products.

This relates to the origin of timber and timber based products and refers to verification of the chain of custody of timber and timber based products from the forest, through processing and manufacturing, to the end user. Compliance with this Standard provides a consistent basis for the sustainable supply of timber/timber based products.

It thus provides the basis for third party certification suitable for demonstrating compliance with State or any other procurement policies and specifications for timber harvesting and manufacturing of timber based products. Also, compliance with this Standard is a prerequisite for the use of any FSC trademarks on the product.

Principle 1

Compliance with laws and principles

Forest management shall respect all applicable laws of the country in which they occur and international treaties and agreements to which the country is a signatory and comply with all FSC Principles and Criteria.

Principle 2

Tenure and use rights and responsibilities

Long term tenure and use rights to the land and forest resources shall be clearly defined, documented and legally established

Principle 3

Indigenous people’s rights

The legal and customary rights of indigenous peoples to own, use and manage their lands, territories and resources shall be recognised and respected

Principle 4

Community relations and workers’ rights

Forest management operations shall maintain or enhance the long term social and economic well being of forest workers and local communities

Principle 5

Benefits from the forest

Forest management operations shall encourage the efficient use of the forest’s multiple products and services to ensure economic viability and a wide range of environmental and social benefits

Principle 6

Environmental impact

Forest management shall conserve biological diversity and its associated values, water resources, soils and unique and fragile ecosystems and landscapes and by so doing, maintain the ecological functions and the integrity of the forests

Principle 7

Management and planning

A management plan - appropriate to the scale and intensity of the operations-shall be written, implemented, and kept up to date. The long-term objectives of management, and the means of achieving them, shall be clearly stated.

Principle 8

Monitoring and assessment

Monitoring shall be conducted - appropriate to the scale of forest management - to assess the condition of the forest, yields of forest products, chain of custody, management activities and their social and environmental impacts

Principle 9

Maintenance of high conservation value forests

Management activities in high conservation value forests shall maintain or enhance the attributes which define such forests. Decisions regarding high conservation value forests shall always be considered in the context of a precautionary approach

Principle 10

Plantations

Plantations shall be planned and managed in accordance with Principles and Criteria 1-9 and Principle 10 and its Criteria. While plantation can provide an array of social and economic benefits, and can contribute to satisfying the world’s needs for forest products, they should complement the management, reduce pressures, and promote the restoration and conservation of natural forests.

Certification process

In the certification process there are pre-evaluation visits also referred to as ‘pre-scoping’ visits, carried out by qualified lead auditors or a small audit team prior to main evaluation.

The Certification Bodies should take a precautionary approach when a high conservation value forest is included in the evaluation.

High conservation value forests are forests that possess one or more of the following attributes:

a) Forest areas containing globally, regionally or nationally significant concentrations of biodiversity values (eg. Endemism, endangered species, refugia); and/or large landscape level forests, contained within, or containing the management unit, where viable populations of most, if not all naturally occurring species exist in natural patterns of distribution and abundance.

b) Forest areas that are in or contain threatened or endangered ecosystems.

c) Forest areas that provide basic services of nature in critical situations (eg. watershed protection, erosion control)

d) Forest areas fundamental to meeting basic needs of local communities (eg. subsistence, health) and/or critical to local communities’ traditional cultural identity (areas of cultural, ecological, economic or religious significance identified in cooperation with such local communities).

Chain of custody certification process is done by which the source and flow of timber products is verified from the forest to the market.

When tracking has been independently verified, then the product can carry the FSC logo. This certification is important to the people who are worried about the forest destruction. This provides an independent, international and credible labelling scheme which guarantees to consumers that the product comes from a forest managed in a responsible way.

FSC is funded by charitable foundations, government donors, membership subscriptions and accreditation fees. It does not accept funding from industry. At the same time, NGO’s, forest managers, owners, companies, State Forest Departments and representatives of indigenous peoples’ organisations have been united to form ‘focus groups’.

Benefits of Forest
Stewardship Certification

The benefits that accure to the forest owners and country at large would enlarge the range of FSC certified products and bring more opportunities for export and permit sustainable expansion of good native forest management and help business management in the long term.

Many Sri Lankan organisations have contributed SLSI in the formulation of the Sri Lanka Standard on Sustainable Forest Management. It was funded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the certification project has eleven phases.

The Export Development Board, State Timber Corporation, Forest Department, Rubber Research Institute (RRI), Central Environmental Authority and SLSI are on the Steering Committee.

IUCN has had stakeholder meetings and also conducted awareness training and detailed training on writing forest management plans to the potential clients.

Recently, SLSI in association with IUCN trained 35 auditors from the Forest Department, State Timber Corporation, RRI, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Lankan Plantations, IUCN and SLSI. The Resource Provider was the Control Union of the Netherlands.

The stage one audits were conducted for the applicant organisations.

At this stage it is important to note that there are four plantation companies which have obtained FSC Certification and also there are seven furniture and wood product companies which have obtained the chain of custody (CoC) Certification already in Sri Lanka.

It can be concluded by stating that there is a new trend emerging world over in this regard and it is encouraging to see that wood and wood based products are being certified to FSC P and C. Recently when I was reading ‘The Enchantress of the Princess’ by Salman Rushdee I was happily surprised to note that the first page bore the FSC logo to confirm that the paper used for printing was FSC certified.