K.H. Schmincke
Director, Forest Products Division
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
There is certainly no other issue of more national and international interest in forestry nowadays than that of C&I for SFM and certification.
Many papers presented at the thirty-eighth session of the Advisory Committee on Paper and Wood Products last year touched upon certification, a polemic issue, bearing the risk of trade barriers, creating new jobs, being too expensive without adequate payment by the market and even seen as a tool for green-washing. Only few speakers recognized the positive aspects of the issue.
As this subject continues to be controversial and surrounded by complex technical and political aspects, FAO cannot take any lead in this regard. This view was indicated by COFO 1997, by the high level panel on forestry last January and by the last two meetings of the Committee.
However, one of the Committeeís recommendations last year was to provide a forum for a baseline discussion to protect the environment, such as the issue of SFM and certification.
FAO continues to be instrumental in the IFF in facilitating the development of criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management and the identification of common ground between them. FAO also assists those countries and regions not yet covered by one of the four important international initiatives: Helsinki, Montreal, ITTO and Tarapoto. FAO is also involved in the follow-up processes of these four initiatives and provides the relevant progress reports to the IFF sessions.
The seven globally agreed-upon elements of Criteria for SFM are:
• extent of forest resources
• biological diversity
• forest health and vitality
• production functions of forests
• protective functions of forests
• socio-economic benefits and needs
• legal, policy and institutional framework
Reference is made to the progress report on C&I for SFM prepared by FAO for the forthcoming second session of the IFF.
As the political discussion at the eco-regional and international level continues, more practical work for a realistic implementation is needed. In other words, the top-down approach has to be complemented by a bottom-up one, starting with field work.
However, at the moment, few projects are dealing with the more practice-oriented definition of C&I for SFM at the operational or forest management unit level.
One of these is the Centre for International Forest Research in Bogor, Indonesia, CIFORís project funded by the German Cooperation Agency, the European Commission and others.
CIFOR is conducting a project on the testing of C&I in forest sites in Cameroon, Côte díIvoire, Indonesia, Brazil and India, with the objective of defining and testing those C&Is which can be considered objective, cost-effective and relevant in the assessment of the sustainability of prevailing forest management practices. Ecological, institutional and socio-economic parameters have to be taken into account.
Since its inception in 1995, FAO was a member of the International Project Advisory Panel (IPAP) on the testing of C&I for SFM at the FMU level and has hosted the fifith IPAP annual meeting held last month in Rome.
In the two-and-a-half days of meeting , more than 50 scientists, researchers and other experts participated. The results of the research work were presented and future steps discussed. In total, 35 papers were presented and voluminous studies made available.
CIFORís mandate is "to contribute to the sustained well-being of people....through collaborative strategic and applied research in forest systems and forestry...".
Many of the participants and, in particular, the members of the project panel expected a more practice-oriented outcome of this project with clearly defined cost-efficient criteria and scientifically sound indicators. Instead, too much academic discussion on methodologies, stakeholder issues, biological diversity, social C&I and C&I for community-managed forests was heard. In particular, economic C&I were not sufficiently treated. In future, CIFOR will concentrate on forest policy C&I and on C&I for adaptive co-management. As its main sponsor, the German Cooperation Agency has completed its financial contribution, the Advisory Panel has been abolished due to lack of funds.
The linkages between the three levels of C&I for SFM at the eco-regional, national and operational level and the problems of indicators and verifiers as the most important elements for application, continued objective verification and transparent monitoring over time.
FSC-accredited certifying companies participated in the CIFOR testing exercise and workshops with the obvious, clearly expressed interest of learning more about forest management monitoring and measurable indicators and verifiers in order to make their certification more transparent and repeatable over time, instead of it being descriptive and dependent on individual competence and credibility. Unfortunately, certifying companiesí expectations to learn have not been fulfilled.
But certification, through the five FSC-accredited bodies, continues, although not at the same pace, as during the last two years. It is obvious that the continued promotion of FSC certification by the organization itself as well as by environmental NGOs like WWF, IUCN and others will bear its fruits, and countries and companies will more easily adapt to this system. This will be assisted by modifications that FSC continues to make to many of the requirements.
We, in FAO, had the opportunity to verify some of the certification processes under the FSC and found that in the field certification does not always enjoys the high technical level expected. That is to say, it is somewhat descriptive, lacks objective measurable standards and, in particular, follows rather commercial interests as regards the assessment of the economic performance of the certified companies.
Worthy of notice is the fact that up to now only the five certification bodies accredited by FSC have regular publications of their progress in certification by country, region, forest ownership and type of forest (natural or planted).
The following table gives the latest state of certification according to FSC principles and criteria, in area, by 1000 ha:
Table 1. Latest state of certification according to FSC principles and
criteria in area by 1000 ha
|
|
NATURAL FORESTS |
PLANTATION FORESTS |
TOTAL |
% |
|
Europe |
4243 |
ñ |
4 243 |
65.3 |
|
North-America |
1 389 |
5 |
1 420 |
21.9 |
|
Australia/ Pacific non-tropic |
ñ |
46 |
46 |
0.7 |
|
Asia/ Pacific tropic |
55 |
13 |
68 |
1.0 |
|
Africa |
ñ |
349 |
349 |
5.4 |
|
Latin America |
288 |
82 |
370 |
5.7 |
|
Total |
5 975 |
495 |
6 496 |
100 |
|
% |
92.0 |
|
8 |
100 |
Source: SGS/FSC
Only 12 percent of the certified forests are in tropical regions, and Europe ñ together with the United States ñ have more than 88 percent. Europe has the biggest share, with 65 percent, out of which 2.5 million ha (38%) are in Sweden and 1.7 million ha (26%) in Poland.
The meaning of natural and plantation forests, or a mixture of the two, is not always clear either for Europe or the United States.
The total of tropical commercial natural forests in the three regions does not account for more than 300 000 ha; a meagre result when compared to the many efforts by countries, companies and certification bodies to bring tropical forests under SFM.
It is worth noting that the areas being certified were obviously already well managed before the certification process began.
One of the most promising national initiatives at present is that of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA). As the defined national standards are closely in line with the Montreal and Helsinki processes, they are already taken as good examples to be followed by others. We notice also that Canada is now engaged in the testing of the standards followed by a national certification system based on ISO 14000 and other principles.
Well advanced is also the Finnish forest certification standard, after a testing phase for which objectives were clearly defined as follows:
• interpretation and testing of the standard
• development of an auditing procedure
• estimation of costs.
The Finnish certification standards represent suitable performance requirements to which forest organizations can commit to when establishing their environmental management systems based on ISO 14001, the EU EMAS regulations and most of the FSC principles, criteria and indicators. It will also comply with the forthcoming Pan-European operational guidelines and will be applied through group certification schemes in the Finnish smallholder family forestry. Such scheme will guarantee that costs be kept acceptable for forest owners and the system effective for the promotion of SFM practices.
By contrast, in Sweden the main industry groups have developed an approach that is closely linked to FSC. The small forest owners have, however, dissociated themselves from this as they consider it to be against their interest.
These two big forest countries have a genuine interest to promote SFM and to audit it through national certification systems as their national economics are heavily dependent on forest utilization, processing and export of forest products.
The Indonesian Eco-labelling Board (LEI) took its reference guidelines from ITTO, FSC and some elements from ISO 14000 series, as well as requirements of the National Standard Council of Indonesia, and carried out tests at the operational level.
In early 1997, in Brazil, the National Standards Body (ABNT) developed a first draft of criteria for plantation forests, based on scientific work previously undertaken by CERFLOR, a national certification scheme initiated by the Brazilian Society for Silviculture.
Also Malaysia has started to test national C&I for SFM and the first certified forest based on the scientific work of a technical cooperation agency has already served to redefine forest concession regulations with sustainable objectives.
The African Timber Organization (ATO) is engaged in testing C&I according to methodologies developed by CIFOR, aiming at producing internationally acceptable standards for the 12 member countries.
We should bear in mind that most of the tropical forest countries have committed themselves to ITTO objective 2000, that means that beginning this year they will produce and trade timber coming only from sustainably managed forests.
In some European countries like Austria, Germany and Switzerland, a mark of origin is under discussion like "wood from sustainable forest management ñ grown in German forests", a confusing statement when compared with certification based on true facts and auditing.
The whole issue of C&I for SFM and related certification is of increasing interest in east European countries. Poland has 1.7 million ha of state-owned forest in four districts and the Czech Republic accounts for 25 000 ha of private and state certified forests. The UN Economic Commission for Europe is organizing, together with the Czech authorities, a workshop on "Certification of Sustainable Forest Management" next September in Prague.
Recently, the subject of SFM and certification has also raised the interest of bilateral technical cooperation agencies like SIDA and GTZ.
SIDA, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, has launched an international training programme for forest certification with the main purpose to support the development of forest certification in selected countries. This programme is carried out in cooperation with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and WWF and is intended for policy makers, forest managers, forest industry managers, potential certifiers and representatives of environmental groups. Two seminars are planned, the first in May in Sweden and the second in November in South Africa. Participation is expected from developing countries as well as from central and east European countries.
GTZ, the German Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit was the main sponsor of the CIFOR project of testing C&I for SFM and will use the results of the research work for its own projects. For that purpose, they have started in January this year a new sectorial project, for a duration of six years. The title of the project is "Introduction and Implementation of Criteria and Indicators and Certification of SFM" in countries in which GTZ runs forest management projects. The certification process is seen as having technical, economic and political dimensions. The overall goal of the project is:
"in selected countries criteria and indicators for SFM are defined in partnership with stakeholders on national level, introduced and implemented; an adequate certification system is established."
Networking between the projects and other national and international organizations will allow exchange of experience and harmonization of C&I and certification systems.
These two examples demonstrate the increasing interest of government bodies to take the lead in the definition of standards and indicators for SFM allowing the implementation, monitoring and the measurement over time of management practices awarded by certification. National standards already existing or modified according to changing needs shall be the basis for this work.
Both agencies are cooperating with NGOs (like WWF and IUCN) also in this domain and following by this the new policy of the World Bank announced during last yearís UNGASS meeting where the President of the World Bank informed that by the year 2015, 200 million ha of forest (100 m temperate and 100 m tropical) will be sustainably managed and certified in alliance with WWF.
This has been confirmed in a first meeting held by the President of the World Bank with the heads of 12 leading international forest companies and seven dominating environmental NGOs early this year in Washington. Regional meetings are underway for establishing an action programme.
Also the European Commission, and in particular the Directorate General VIII has set up a large certification programme for ACP countries.
In this context, the European Commission organized on 13 March 1998, through the European Forest Institute, (EFI) a conference in Brussels under titled "Potential Markets for Certified Products in Europe". This meeting, which was part of the Certification Information Service contracted by DG VIII to EFI, analysed the results of a market survey in selected EU countries. About 120 representatives from forestry, forest industries, environmental groups and forest scientists came to the forthcoming conclusion:
• forest landowners are not actively seeking certification
• the forest products industry is pushing for certification for market reasons
• those who oppose certification are concerned by its costs
• the future push for certification will come from environmental NGOs and industry, but not from consumers.
They are confused by the public debate about the many standards and certificates, country-of-origin labels and NGO campaigns. Only very few are willing to pay a bit more for labelled forest products. The market for certified products was qualified as a sleeping market, holding a wait-and-see attitude.
One additional output of the market survey was the unawareness of the public and the misunderstanding of forestry in general and forest management in particular regarding this issue. Thus, the need for more harmonized and scientific sound information on forest, forest industries, environment and trade through public relations campaigns.
These examples show how far there is still to go in progressing towards SFM.
This is not a complete picture of the many ongoing efforts to bring SFM under a controlled and acceptable system awarded by certification. There are many other examples worthy of mention. A lot of action is under way for implementing and improving sustainable forest management. All these efforts initiated and carried out by the many different stakeholders, possess different scopes according to the interests of the initiators and they all need harmonization.
There are at least three forthcoming ministerial conferences, that of African forest countries early May in the Central African Republic; the third European conference on forest protection early June in Lisbon and the second ministerial conference planned for next March in Rome in connection with COFO. In all these important ministerial conferences and related technical meetings, the question of SFM and standards and, to a certain extent, also certification will be debated in order to find solutions.
It is also obvious that the whole issue of C&I for SFM and certification has taken such a high and dynamic dimension that we cannot halt it or stay away from it. On the contrary, it should be influenced positively and we should take advantage of the opportunity to work on it, to make it feasible, practicable and transparent and to avoid misconceptions and misinterpretations. Many countries, companies and institutions are working on it. Good examples already exist. We should take them for demonstration and training. And we should publicize it. Only this way will forests receive the attention they deserve in order to be conserved and used in a balanced way for the benefits they provide. Thus, will forest products be rightly recognized by the physical, social, cultural, aesthetic and ecological properties they have.
However, in order to achieve this goal, coordinated efforts to harmonize the various initiatives and different processes are a prerequisite. There is only one way to fulfil this, the forest convention with legally binding instruments. This should be the ultimate goal of all national and international forest policy initiatives, to pave the way, to remove all obstacles and to find a common agreement.
