Wednesday, 29 April 2015
FSC International Board Approved International Generic Indicators
© DomtarApril 29, 2015
The FSC International Board of Directors formally approved the International Generic Indicators (IGIs) on March 27, 2015.
The IGIs have been developed over the past few years, and are based on the newest version of the FSC Principles and Criteria. The IGIs are intended to act as a starting point for the revision of FSC national standards, including the US Forest Management Standard. The IGIs will also serve as interim standards that can be used to certify forests in countries without approved national standards.
As part of this decision, the Board also explicitly chose to allow national initiatives to have the ability to adapt or omit IGIs, where there is justification, in order to ensure that they can be properly integrated into a national context. The Board also agreed that the “Instructions for Standard Developers” should be amended with clarifying language distinguishing mandatory instructions from those that are provided as recommendations for consideration.
The IGI document and related information is available on the international IGI website.
As appropriate, FSC-US will integrate the IGIs into the new US Forest Management Standard during the upcoming revision of that standard.