- Know your certifications before you bet your brand on them.
- Give preference to a range of certification standards rather than relying on a single standard.
Forest product purchasers worldwide want to be assured that the products they buy come from well-managed forests.
Certification systems based on principles of sustainable forest management emerged in the past two decades as a means of giving customers the assurance that a forest product was derived from sustainably managed forests. In short, the certification system takes a highly complex subject, involving environmental and social sciences and economics, and condenses it down to the simplest market signal – a stamp or marque designating the product's sustainable production.
Certification systems can also include a chain of custody, a method that allows forest products – both pulpwood and lumber – to be tracked from the forest floor, to the mill and through the transportation chain in order to verify sustainable forest management.
In many jurisdictions, forest management practices are regulated through detailed legal requirements enforced by national and/or regional governments. Certification does not replace the legal obligations of forest companies operating in these jurisdictions but is instead an additional level of assurance for forest product customers. Forest companies adopt certification standards as a voluntary means of demonstrating to customers their commitment to sustainability via an independent, third-party certification audit.
As new, credible certification systems have entered the sustainable forest management marketplace, forest product purchasers, including solid wood and paper buyers, have looked to these various systems in order to filter sustainable forest practices from unsustainable ones.
Forest Certification Standards
There are essentially two major independent, third-party forest certification standards available globally: the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The PEFC is an umbrella for many national forest certification standards, including those from the U.S., Canada, Malaysia, Gabon and Finland – to name just a few. According to the United Nations, the PEFC accounted for most of the forest area certified worldwide, with "slightly less than two-thirds (64.2 percent) of the area certified globally," or 507 million acres (205 million hectares). This compares with FSC's certification of 257 million acres (104 million hectares).
From 2000 to 2008 the area of forest independently certified globally grew from 112 million acres (45 million hectares) to 791 million acres (320 million hectares). This is a substantial increase over eight years, yet this gain still means that only about 8.3 percent of the world's commercial forest area is independently certified as well managed. Furthermore, the growth in certification has been made primarily in the forests of the developed countries of North America and Western Europe. Canada alone has 40 percent of the world's certified forest area, with almost 353 million acres (143 million hectares).
According to the United Nations, only 0.5 percent of the vast African and Asian forests and only 1.6 percent of forests in Latin America are certified. There are many reasons why subtropical and tropical forests have had difficulty obtaining certification. Forest certification is quite costly. Some of these forests (although by no means all) may be badly managed and would require substantial investment to bring them in line with forests in North America and Western Europe. Since consumers refuse to pay a price premium for certified wood products, there may be little incentive for subtropical and tropical producers to invest in certification.
However, as countries such as Indonesia, China, India, and Brazil gain wealth, it is likely that more of their forest area will come under one or more forest certification regimes. The coming decade likely will see further advances in forest certification throughout the world. At the same time, certification standards like the FSC are likely to take a more balanced and transparent approach in interactions with the major tropical forest companies.
A Sensible Forest Product Procurement Policy
Given the variety of certification systems now available, procurement executives must create procurement policies squarely based on performance in order to ensure those policies endure. One means of doing so is to develop an inclusive approach to procurement rather than an exclusive one – that is, procurement policies should give preference to a range of independent, third-party forest certification standards rather than favoring any one certification label in particular.
While anti-forestry activists may urge forest product buyers to adopt one certification standard over another, the facts remain that the major standards are equally rigorous and that favoring one standard over another because of activist pressure can create situations that are generally not favorable to forest product purchasers. Exclusive procurement policies that favor one particular certification standard over others can result in increased costs to purchasers and limited supply. As one U.K.-based procurement executive explained during the early days of this debate: "We have not been able to buy otherwise competitive products from well-managed forests for the sole reason that they have the wrong label on the package."
More recently, companies have adopted procurement policies that appear to satisfy NGO concerns while remaining inclusive by giving preference to a range of independent, third-party forest certification standards.
The sample procurement policy outlined in the sidebar can serve as a reference for forest product buyers worldwide. This type of policy, focused on environmental criteria rather than on geopolitical locations or brand-specific requirements, provides enhanced flexibility to buyers while ensuring the procured forest products are from well-managed forests.
[Sidebar:] Sample Procurement Policy for Forestry Products
Recognizing the vital and diverse nature of forest values, it is our intention to use only products derived from sustainably managed forests. Sustainable forest management maintains the health and productivity of forest ecosystems, while facilitating forest-based economic and social development. It will incorporate, without being limited to, the following objectives:
- Conservation of biodiversity;
- Conservation of soil and water quantity and quality;
- Maintenance of contributions to global ecological cycles (e.g., carbon cycle);
- Protection of a representative network of forested areas;
- Regulation of harvest levels with regard to long-term productivity; and,
- Integration of timber-related and non-timber-related uses (e.g., recreation, community forestry).
We will also give preference to certified forest products, including products certified by:
- Indonesian Ecolabeling Institute – Lembaga Ekolabel Indonesia (LEI);
- The Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC);
- Forest Stewardship Council (FSC); and,
- Other nationally recognized sustainable forest management standards.
We will do so in order to ensure that the forest products we purchase come from sustainably managed forests.
About the Author: An advisor to industry and government, Dr. Patrick Moore is a co-founder and former leader of Greenpeace and chair and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. in Vancouver, Canada. His new book, "Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist," is available at www.sensibleenvironmentalist.com and online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
