Wednesday, 01 October 2003
Observations on Certification in North America
FSC-US President Speaks at Certification Watch Conference
The 4th Certification Watch Conference was held on September 25th in Québec City in conjunction with the World Forestry Congress. Roger Dower, FSC-US
president, was provided the opportunity to speak and share his thoughts on the state of forest certification in North America. Specifically, he was asked to take off his FSC-US hat for a moment, and reflect on what he saw as the major characteristics of certification in the North American context.
Dower outlined five general observations, and the challenges and/or opportunities that each of these present:
1. Certification is a fact of life — Almost all industrial lands in the U.S. are under some certification system and roughly 60 percent are third-party certified to one standard or the other. Progress in Canada has been slower, they will quickly catch up. Tens of millions of acres of forest are expected to be certified over the next few years. Certification is part of the vocabulary and dialogue of industrial forest management.
2. Small landowners remain a challenge — Third-party certification has not touched, in any significant way, non Industrial private forests (NIPFs), which are the largest forest ownership type in the U.S., but less of a issue in Canada where most of the lands are publicly owned. This is a liability for many forest management companies that buy wood from these sources. There is a real need to find cost effective approaches to bring smaller forest owners into stronger forest management programs. FSC’s group certification program and the Small Low Intensity Managed Forests (SLIMFs) initiative are two important steps in that direction.
3. Tracking supply is critical — The ability to track wood supply from forest to end user is central to the credibility of 3rd party forest certification systems. Given that many U.S. wood product companies depend on outside sources of wood supplies, they must be able to demonstrate that the wood is coming from well-managed forest systems. The value and meaning of any certified label is heavily dependent on being able to trace the supplies from source to ultimate consumer. In North America, only FSC and CSA have a chain-of-custody program to track the flow of certified product.
4. Social aspects of certification are important — Well-managed forestry requires a three-legged stool — economic, environmental and social. Typically, however, the social leg does not have the same strength as the others. It is harder to identify and articulate social goals and objectives, yet without a social license the other legs cannot hold up the seat. Because of the land tenure context in Canada, the social dimension of certification has been more explicitly incorporated into the FSC Canadian standards. Other certification programs need to make greater efforts to build the social foundation for well-managed forestry.
5. Evidence of benefits is lacking — While we have plenty of “comparative" studies, we have surprisingly little data on what certification actually achieves in terms of environmental and social outcomes on-the-ground. Yet our ability to demonstrate outcomes is a key element of stakeholder support and to help guide our assessment of our standards and processes. We need better, more robust data and information on what environmental and social benefits are generated by forest certification programs. FSC-US is committed to initiating a long-term evaluation on these outcomes of its own programs.