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Forest Certification A view from Hugh Miller presented to the 2008 PEFC UK AGM
Forestry and Certification
Following the 2007 PEFC UK AGM, Hugh Miller presented a paper which traced the attempts to arrest forest destruction and degradation, in particular through the forest certification and timber labelling schemes of FSC and PEFC.
Forests are important habitats and provide many goods and services, including locking up carbon, but are disappearing at a rapid rate. The forests of the World, particularly the tropical world, are under threat. In many areas they are disappearing, although the exact rate is a matter of some dispute for it depends on definitions and the standpoint of the messenger.
There are problems as to what defines a forest and more particularly what constitutes deforestation. Does deforestation refer only to the permanent removal of trees or does it include their temporary removal, as for example in systems of shifting cultivation or controlled felling? Should deforestation refer to the removal of forest cover alone or should it also refer to the loss of various forest attributes, such as structure or species composition? Clearly changing the definition of deforestation will also change the ‘agent of deforestation’ and the choice of either seems to depend very much on the message that individuals or groups wish to project.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) is probably the only reliable source of data. It estimates that over the recent past, deforestation has been running at about 13 million hectares per year (just over half the area of the UK). The actual net annual rate of loss is less than this because of the of the creation of new forests but even so the world’s forest area is still reducing by about 200 square kilometres per day, most of these being in the tropics.
This is a tragic state of affairs. Forests are a very significant sink for CO2. Twenty per cent of anthropogenic CO2 emissions can be accounted for by deforestation, yet if properly managed forests’ role as carbon sinks can be enhanced. The FAO estimate that the destruction of the tropical forests may be leading to the loss of 100 species per day. As many as 1.6 billion people depend to some extent on forests for their livelihood. Forests are economically valuable world wide the gross value added in the forestry sector is about one billion US $ per day. Clearly the rate of deforestation must be reduced but it is an intractable problem. As the FAO once pointed out, the underlying cause of the destruction and degradation of tropical forests is the poverty of the people who live in and around them – it is largely, but by no means entirely, a problem of land hunger.
Attempts to control tropical deforestation started in the colonial era, and were not without success but the methods are perhaps not applicable to the modern era. The pattern of aid then offered in immediate post-colonial times, with its emphasis on industrial development, did little to help. Indeed, the rate of tropical deforestation was to accelerate (whereas in the temperate world there was to be significant expansion of forests) provoking increasing concern among foresters and environmentalists. This was to lead in the early 1980s first to the establishment of the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO), a result of a commodity agreement under the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and then to FAO’s Tropical Forestry Action Programme (TFAP). The first sought to bring together producers and consumers of tropical timber to regularise their trade and ensure sustainable forest management. The second aimed to stimulate proper forest planning and management in developing countries through the orchestration of the supply of expertise and, most particularly, aid. ITTO was, and is, a worthy organisation but it cannot deliver more than member countries are prepared to offer. TFAP turned out to be too successful, quite outrunning the limited assistance and aid that was available and so losing credibility.
Despite these efforts tropical deforestation was accelerating at an alarming rate. Major figures in the environmental movement were becoming disillusioned and focussed their hopes on the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCTAD), the Earth Summit, to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. This aimed to get agreement for binding conventions on biological diversity, climate change, combating desertification and the sustainable development of forests. That on biological diversity was approved and has lead to country specific Biodiversity Action Plans. Discussions on climate change only produced a framework convention that has had to be further developed at Kyoto and Bali. A convention to combat desertification was easily achieved but this was anything but the case regarding the sustainable development of forests. Countries of the south objected to being bullied. They were to insist that they ‘had the unalienable right to utilise, manage and develop their forests’ and would only agree to a ‘non-legally binding authoritative statement on the management, conservation, and sustainable development of all types of forests’.
Environmental organisations were devastated. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) branded the agreement as ‘merely a wish list’ and argued what was now needed was ‘an environmental auditing system … in which competent auditors assess forestry operations on a regular basis for timber certification’. This idea had already been tried out on a small scale, particularly in the United States, and WWF had been investigating it for some time. As a result they were able to move rapidly and in 1993 the inaugural meeting of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) was held in Toronto. The idea was that FSC would draw up an overall list of Principles and Criteria (P&C) for sustainable forest management and that these would then be elaborated upon in individual countries. To ensure the veracity of the label on delivered material there would also need to be means for monitoring the chain of custody from forest to consumer. With these in place efforts would then be made, both internationally and within countries, to apply pressure on retailers and major users of timber products to only purchase labelled material.
In the developed world the timber trade was sympathetic but cautious as to whether the scheme could be made to work. However, with time FSC was able to recruit sufficient consumers of timber products to create a demand for labelled material from certified forests. Attempts to respond to this demand were to reveal dichotomies within the fabric of FSC. Although post-Rio, FSC had been careful to insist that it was aiming at all the world’s forests, not just tropical ones, the original nine P&C seem to have been drawn up mainly with tropical primary forests in mind. Thus plantations were originally excluded despite the fact that much of the world’s industrial timber and pulp is derived from planted trees. Later FSC was to respond by adding a tenth P&C to cover plantations, a move that provoked considerable angst in certain sections of its membership who could only conceive of plantations as being the result of jungle clearance (factually, most are on ex-agricultural land and are concentrated in temperate regions). Another consequence of the tropical idée fixe is that the authors of the P&C seem to have had in mind tenure systems involving extensive areas of public forests leased to large logging organisations. Faced with the situation of small private owners of planted forests that characterises most of Europe, the FSC had a problem.
It was hoped that the solution would lie in the way local FSC committees sought to draw up country specific interpretations of the main P&C. The resulting negotiations in many European countries were not easy and were soon to throw up a third problem, namely who was to own the process. Any organisation, environmental ones included, has to constantly steer a middle way between purists and realists. Within FSC, these extremes were represented by deep greens who wanted to control the forest agenda and realists who were seeking to ensure a supply of properly and honestly labelled timber. When faced with this conflict during negotiations, the timber and forest interests often became fearful that any agreement would leave them hostage to an uncertain and changing future, and one over which they would have little influence. Trust became a scarce commodity. In the UK, protracted negotiations led to the creation of the United Kingdom Woodland Assurance Standard (UKWAS) in which the ownership issue was settled by vesting it in a free-standing independent organisation, separate from both the FSC and the forest and timber industries, but on which all interests are represented and in which agreement must be by consensus. UKWAS also coped with the problem of small owners by introducing the concept of group certification.
UKWAS seemed to provide a model that could be followed else where, indeed the forest and timber industry was keen that this should be so. However, in many countries of northern and central Europe local FSC groups seemed reluctant to take this route. Negotiations became more fraught, particularly over small owners (nothing would be achieved by insisting that every owner of a few hectares of trees put 5% into conservation) and, increasingly, over ownership of the process. Accordingly, in the year that FSC International eventually endorsed the UKWAS (1999), representatives of Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland came together to set up the Pan European Forest Certification Programme (PEFC), now renamed the Programme for the Endorsemant of Forest Certification scmes as countries from other parts of the world become members.
PEFC aims ‘to achieve compatibility between credible and independent forest certification systems and to implement and safeguard consistently high standards for sustainable forest management around the globe’. In its case, as indeed in FSC’s, the standards for sustainable forest management stem from the Rio agreement. Rio was not an end in itself but set up a series of ‘processes’ around the world to take the agreement forward. Perhaps a certain embarrassment at not achieving a binding convention gave spur to this development. In Europe, the process was taken forward by the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of the Forests of Europe (MCPFE), the second conference of which took place in Helsinki the year after Rio. The Helsinki Agreement laid out the Criteria and Indictors (C&I) for sustainable forest management in Europe and these were further developed at the third conference, in Lisbon in 1998, which laid out the Pan-European Operational Level Guidelines (PEOLG) for sustainability. Similar processes have gone on elsewhere, for example the Montreal Process for non-European temperate and boreal forests and the Tarapoto Process for Amazonian forests. In each case, these UN approved criteria and guidelines provide the basis for the forest management commitments required by PEFC if it is to accept a certification scheme (there is also a standard protocol for chain of custody certification).
Some 33 countries from six continents are now part of the PEFC council and 24 of these have developed certification schemes that have gone through the PEFC process of assessment and endorsement that allows them to label timber with the PEFC logo. As a consequence over 200 million hectares of forest are now within the PEFC scheme, there being a further 90 million hectares covered by FSC (involving 45 countries). As both schemes arise from the same source the differences in content and methodology are minimal.
PEFC does not see itself as a less rigorous organisation than FSC; although others may try to argue that it is (the two are accepted as equivalent by most of the European governments who have set out timber procurement policies). Rather the need for PEFC arose from the fact that individual countries were putting forward their own schemes (often after failing to reach agreement with FSC) and so it was clearly necessary to assess and police these schemes to ensure that they achieve and maintain the standards of sustainable forest management that timber retailers and consumers demand in the post-Rio world. PEFC sees itself as an alternative, not as a competitor, to FSC. Perhaps in a perfect world there might be only one labelling organisation but it would have to be independently owned if the trust of all interested parties is to be maintained. Meanwhile, with less than 300 million of the World’s almost 4000 million hectares of forest certified there is still a big task ahead of us all.
Hugh G Miller OBE, DSc, FICFor, FRSE
Hugh Miller is a Chartered Forester, Emeritus Professor of Forestry at the University of Aberdeen and a Director of PEFC UK.
Oct 21, 2008
Revision of the PEFC Logo Usage Rules
Subject to ratification by the General Assembly of PEFC at the meeting to be held in Canberra, Australia at the end of October, a new Standard (PEFC ST 2001:2008) for PEFC Logo Usage Rules will be introduced which will have a one year transition period of introduction for existing users.
The PEFC logo / label provides information relating to the origin of forest based product in sustainably managed forest and other non controversial sources. Purchasers and potential purchasers can use this information in choosing the product based on environmental, as well as other considerations.
The overall goal of the PEFC logo / label usage is, through communication of accurate and verifiable information that is not misleading, to encourage demand for and supply of those products originating in sustainably managed forests and thereby stimulating the potential for market-driven continuous improvement of the world’s forest resource.
The document is based on the general principles for environmental labels and declarations defined in ISO 14020:2000.
Over the coming months all existing Logo licence holders will receive a copy of the Standard and an explanatory CD with the artwork and the logo types
Oct 21, 2008
Measuring Timber Certification: Rising Availability of Certified Imports
[ Download/View File ]
Feb 1, 2007
The report “Measuring Timber Certification - Timber Importing; Trading is concerned solely with the importing sector of the UK timber industry.
[ Download/View File ]
Feb 1, 2007
PEFC UK Certification Scheme for Sustainable Forest Management
The revision of the PEFC UK certification Scheme for Sustainable Forest Management (Revision 2006) has now been submitted to PEFC Council for re-endorsement. Comments and observations are welcome and should be sent to the National Secretary (William Walker), via the Contact Us page.
The following link will direct you to the revision issue dated August 2006
[ Download/View File ]
Sep 1, 2006
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