Tuesday, 19 January 2021
Revised Forest Management Groups Standard Approved
The Forest Management Groups standard allows several forest management units to join together and form a group under one FSC certificate. This streamlines tasks, alleviates the administrative burden, can help reduce costs thanks to the economy of scale and is the main tool used in FSC certification of small forest properties.
The revised standard maintains the basics of the current version but presents the requirements in a simplified manner. Revisions include easier to understand language, information boxes providing clarifications, examples and a revised structure. Some terms found to be confusing have been clarified, and an effort has been made to explain the flexibility that the standard allows for. Ultimately, it is intended to empower the manager of the group to choose how best to manage its group by using the different options available in the standard.
New to the standard is a risk-based approach for the internal monitoring of the group, so that the intensity of monitoring is adapted based on the level of risk associated with the implementation of management activities in the forest. Forestry contractors can now also be included in the groups; a change requested by FSC stakeholders as well as FSC Members through Motion 46 at the 2017 General Assembly. The updated standard can be viewed below and in the Document Center here.