Thursday, 06 June 2013
Public Consultation Underway for Draft Advice Notes Regarding Controlled Wood Requirements
June 6, 2013
On May 23, 2013, FSC released five draft Advice Notes for public consultation. These draft Advice Notes have been created to provide clarification to existing Controlled Wood requirements for both Certificate Holders using Controlled Wood and Certifying Bodies auditing requirements for Controlled Wood.
The five draft Advice Notes and Comment Form are available for download here.
To comment, please fill out the Comment Form available for download with the Advice Notes and submit all comments to Joanna Nowakowska with the FSC International Center at j.nowakowska at fsc point org. If you would like, feel free to cc Gary Dodge (g.dodge@us.fsc.org) and Keith Stagg (k.stagg@us.fsc.org) on your emails to Joanna. The deadline for submitting comments is July 23, 2013.
A summary of each Advice Note is below. For questions please contact Keith Stagg at k.stagg at us.fsc point org.
ADVICE-20-001-XX Controlled Wood Auditor qualifications
Why is this advice needed?
The current Certification Body (CB) accreditation standard (FSC-STD-20-001) does not clearly provide the qualification requirements for auditors evaluating Controlled Wood at the forest level.
What is this advice proposing?
This Advice establishes revised minimum qualification requirements for CBs auditing Controlled Wood at the Forest Management Unit (FMU) level, and through Annex 3. The new requirements are equivalent to those for FSC Forest Management (FM) audits.
ADVICE-40-004-XX Verification of controlled input materials
Why is this advice needed?
The current Chain of Custody (COC) standard does not provide clear requirements on how to control materials that, due to a break in the chain of custody, lost their status as FSC-certified material and would otherwise be lost to the FSC supply chain.
What is this advice proposing?
This Advice provides the process for claiming materials that previously held FSC claims as Controlled Wood when they have been passed through an entity without COC certification.
ADVICE-40-005-07 Controlled Wood public summaries
Why is this advice needed?
The existing requirements for public summaries of risk assessments and stakeholder consultations are unclear and do not lead to transparent and consistent reports.
What is this advice proposing?
This Advice provides minimum content requirements for publicly available risk assessments and stakeholder consultation. Most notably, the Advice note introduces requirements to report on results of public consultation during Annex 3 processes.
ADVICE-40-005-XX Controlled Wood stakeholder consultation
Why is this advice needed?
As with public summaries (see above), the exiting requirements for stakeholder consultation require clarification so that they result in consistent processes.
What is this advice proposing?
This Advice provides clarification on stakeholder consultation requirements when an area is not designated as “Low Risk” in Category 2 (wood harvested in violation of traditional and civil rights), or Category 3 (wood harvested in forests in which high conservation values are threatened by management activities). This clarification aligns consultation requirements with those established in the revised Principles and Criteria and specifically introduces affected and interested stakeholders as necessary parts of the process.
ADVICE-40-004-XX Pre-consumer reclaimed wood legal compliance
Why is this advice needed?
FSC identified the need to introducing requirements for the control of pre-consumer reclaimed wood in order to ensure FSC’s products conformance with EUTR definition of waste materials.
What is this advice proposing?
This Advice provides the necessary procedure for showing legal compliance for pre-consumer reclaimed wood.