Forest Stewardship Council

The Forest Stewardship Council GmbH (FSC) is an international non-profit, multistakeholder organization established in 1993 that promotes responsible management of the world's forests via timber certification. This organization uses a market-based approach to transnational environmental policy.

FSC is a global forest certification system established for forests and forest products. According to the council, the use of the FSC logo signifies that a product comes from environmentally, socially, and economically responsible sources. In addition to its global certification standard, FSC develops national standards in selected countries. The FSC has 10 Principles and associated Criteria (FSC P&C) that form the basis for all FSC standards and certification.

FSC was established in 1993 as a response to concerns over global deforestation. It now has around 1200 members, including the World Wide Fund for Nature and IKEA.

History

Tropical deforestation as a global concern rose to prominence in the 1980s and can be attributed in part to environmentalists and northern countries advocating for the need to protect tropical woodland. A number of other economic and regulatory mechanisms such as financial aid, policy frameworks, and trade conventions were also established to prevent and mitigate deforestation. These include the International Tropical Timber Agreement (1983), the Convention of International Trade on Endangered Species (1975) and the Global Environment Facility (1991).

Despite the increased levels of concern in the run-up to the 1992 Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, tensions between the North and the global South over access to finance and technology for the preservation of forests protracted negotiations. Although many Northern countries had hoped for a legally binding convention, the resulting Statement of Forest Principles represents the "mean position of the lowest common denominator" and is voluntary. Disappointed with the outcome of the Earth Summit, NGOs such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) began to turn their attention to industry for a governance-oriented resolution to deforestation.

In the lead-up to the Earth Summit, social groups, NGOs, and industries were also beginning to consult on the issue of deforestation. In America, the consultation process that eventually led to the establishment of the FSC was initiated in 1990 and concluded in the confirmation of support for the development of a voluntary worldwide certification and accreditation governance system that would cover all forest types.

In the UK, NGO WWF began to facilitate action through the establishment of th
1995 Group
recruiting organizations that had been spurred on by instances of direct action and boycotting over the sale of tropical wood to form an NGO-business partnership. Through stakeholder involvement, it became apparent that a standard-setting body would be required to verify the source of wood products and define sustainable forest management. After 18 months of consultation in ten different countries, the Forest Stewardship Council was established in 1993.

The failure of governments to reach any notable form of consensus in the form of an internationally reaching and legally binding agreement caused both disillusionment and an opportunity for change through the involvement of civil society and business actors to form "soft law". As such the establishment of the Forest Stewardship Council as the response to this disillusionment also represents a global shift from government to governance and its creation is a primary example of the use of market and economic factors to create movement on a global environmental issue.

In February 2012, the membership approved the first major revision to the 10 Principles and associated Criteria (FSC P&C), which form the basis for all FSC standards and certification, in order to bring its certification up to date. The review and revision of the FSC P&C began in 2008 and gathered feedback from many FSC members and other stakeholders. This revision also marked the start of a process of developing baseline requirements for each of the revised Criteria. These requirements – called International Generic Indicators (IGIs) – are intended to ensure consistent application of the FSC P&C across all countries. Where national standards are not currently established, the IGIs will be used as interim standards.

On 25 September 2009, the first FSC Friday took place in Bonn. FSC Friday is a once-a-year promotional event dedicated to the celebration of forests around the globe and the promotion of responsible forest management worldwide.

Purpose

The FSC's stated mission is to "promote environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world's forests". It claims that forests managed to its standards offer benefits to both local and wider communities, and these are said to include cleaner air and water, and a contribution to mitigating the effects of climate change. FSC addresses issues such as illegal logging, deforestation and global warming and some reports indicate positive effects on economic development, environmental conservation, poverty alleviation, and social and political empowerment.

To this end, the body has published a global strategy with five goals:
# Advancing globally responsible forest management.
# Ensure equitable access to the benefits of FSC systems.
# Ensure integrity, credibility and transparency of the FSC system.
# Create business value for products from FSC certified forests.
# Strengthen the global network to deliver on goals 1 through 4.

These goals are promoted, managed, and developed through six program areas: forests, chain of custody, social policy, monitoring and evaluation, quality assurance, and ecosystem services.

Structure and governance

FSC is an international membership organization with a governance structure based on participation, democracy, equity and transparency. It is a platform for forest owners, timber industries, social groups and environmental organizations to find solutions to improve forest management practices. It is an example of a product-oriented multistakeholder governance group.

It is governed by its members, who join either as individuals or as representatives of organizations. Members apply to join one of three chambers – environmental, social and economic. Each chamber is divided into northern and southern sub-chambers and votes are weighted to ensure that north and south each have 50%. This system is designed to ensure that influence is shared equally between different interest groups, without having to limit the number of members.

FSC has three levels of decision-making bodies: The General Assembly, the Board of Directors and the executive director. The General Assembly, which takes place every three years, is made up of the three membership chambers and is the highest decision-making body in FSC. Every member has the right to attend, formulate and submit motions, and vote. The FSC Board of Directors is accountable to the FSC members. It is made up of nine elected individuals who are FSC members and advocates. One member of the board of directors is elected from each sub-chamber of the General Assembly. The executive director runs FSC on a day-to-day basis with the support of a professional team at the FSC International Center. He or she is accountable to the FSC Board of Directors.

While the FSC International Center is based in Bonn, Germany, it has a decentralized network of FSC Network PartnersJuly 2012, Procedure for the operation of the FSC Network FSC-PRO-60-001 V1-0 EN.pdf that promote responsible forest management on behalf of FSC. FSC Network Partners include FSC National Offices, FSC National Representatives and FSC National Focal Points.

Kim Carstensen has been the Director General of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) since October 2012.

Membership and partners

FSC has around 1200 members, including NGOs such as the World Wide Fund for Nature; civil society organizations; forestry-focused research organizations; certification organizations; private companies in the forestry, timber and paper industries, such as IKEA (Sweden); and trade unions and workers' associations.

Numerous governments worldwide have strengthened market-based incentives for timber certification by providing tax benefits to certified companies, referencing certified products as requirements in their procurement policies and supporting projects linked to FSC through their international development agencies. Some companies also choose timber certification as a tool to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability.

FSC is a member of the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling (ISEAL) Alliance, an association of voluntary international standard setting and certification organizations focused on social and environmental issues. Since 2006, FSC has complied with ISEAL's Code of Good Practice for Setting Social and Environmental standards, aimed at assuring high standards for credible behavior in ethical trade.

In 2009, FSC began a pilot project with Fairtrade International (FLO) to help community-based and small-scale timber producers get a fair price for their products and gain visibility in the marketplace. The first jointly labelled FSC-FLO products went onto the market in 2011, using wood from the forests of the Curacautín Valley in Chile, manufactured commercially by Swedish firm Kährs.

FSC also works in liaison with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It contributes to the ISO's committees on sustainable criteria for bioenergy, environmental auditing and environmental labelling.

Standards and accreditation

FSC is a global forest certification system established for forests and forest products. FSC International sets the framework for developing and maintaining international, national and sub-national standards. This is intended to ensure that the process for developing FSC policies and standards is transparent, independent and participatory. A number of alternative national and regional forest certification bodies also exist around the globe.

The FSC has 10 Principles and associated Criteria that form the basis for all FSC standards and certification.

Using the FSC logo supposedly signifies that the product comes from responsible sources—environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable. The FSC label is used on a wide range of timber and non-timber products, from paper and furniture to medicine and jewelry, and aims to give consumers the option of supporting responsible forestry.

National Forest Stewardship Standard

In addition to its global certification standard, FSC develops national standards in selected countries. These standards are closely aligned to the global certification standard and its criteria, but are adapted to local context conditions. Currently, so called National Forest Stewardship Standards exist for the following countries (sorted by first year of introduction):

Accreditation

FSC does not conduct certification audits itself, developing procedures and standards to evaluate whether certification bodies can provide independent and competent certification services. This process is known as 'accreditation'.

A potential certification body must gain FSC accreditation to be able to evaluate, monitor and certify companies to FSC standards. To become FSC accredited, certifiers have to comply with an extensive set of rules and procedures verified by Assurance Services International GmbH – an international assurance organisation for voluntary sustainability standards and initiatives including MSC and RSPO. To control the continued implementation of FSC rules and procedures, every year ASI conducts at least one office and one field assessment for each FSC accredited certification body. The exact number and distribution of ASI assessments takes a number of complex factors into account (geographic areas, policies or products that carry increased risk) and the number of FSC certificates handled by an accredited certification body.

Some summaries of ASI surveillance audits are publicly available on the ASI website. If an FSC accredited certification body is found to not fully comply with FSC rules and procedures, nonconformities are raised.

If an accreditation body finds forest management at an organisation to be non-compliant, pre-conditions are noted which must be fulfilled before the FSC certificate can be awarded. If minor non-compliances are noted, the certificate can be issued with conditions that have to be met within a clearly determined timeframe. An accreditation body audits each FSC certificate issued at least once a year. Non-compliance results in a request to make the prescribed changes within a given timeframe or lose its FSC certificate. Depending on the seriousness of the infringement, the timeline can go from one year for minor administrative infringements to immediate action for major infringements.

Certifications

In September 2012, some 165 million hectares were certified to FSC's Principles and Criteria in 80 countries. Around 24,000 FSC Chain of Custody certificates were active in 107 countries. The FSC website has statistics on regional distributions, ownership and forest type and numbers of FSC certificates representing all valid forest management and chain of custody certificates.
The expenses for successful forest management certification typically are divided into costs for the enhancement of sustainability, audits, and secondary costs (e.g. losses of stumpage revenues).

Forest management certification

Forest management certification is a voluntary process for verifying responsible forest practices. An FSC- accredited certification body performs a forest inspection at the request of the forest owner or operator. Certificate holders are charged an annual fee to renew their accreditation, and continuous compliance is expected.

The FSC P&C apply to all tropical, temperate and boreal forests and many tree plantations and partially replanted forests. Though mainly designed for forest management for timber products, they are also largely relevant for non-timber products (e.g. Brazil nuts) and other environmental services such as clean water and air and carbon sequestration.

The Revised P&C were approved in February 2012. The basic requirements are:

# The Organization shall comply with all applicable laws, regulations and nationally ratified international treaties, conventions and agreements.
# The Organization shall maintain or enhance the social and economic wellbeing of workers.
# The Organization shall identify and uphold indigenous peoples' legal and customary rights of ownership, use and management of land, territories and resources affected by management activities.
# The Organization shall contribute to maintaining or enhancing the social and economic wellbeing of local communities
# The Organization shall efficiently manage the range of multiple products and services of the Management Unit to maintain or enhance long-term economic viability and the range of environmental and social benefits.
# The Organization shall maintain, conserve and/or restore ecosystem services and environmental values of the Management Unit, and shall avoid, repair or mitigate negative environmental impacts.
# The Organization shall have a management plan consistent with its policies and objectives and proportionate to scale, intensity and risks of its management activities. The management plan shall be implemented and kept up to date based on monitoring information in order to promote adaptive management. The associated planning and procedural documentation shall be sufficient to guide staff, inform affected stakeholders and interested stakeholders and to justify management decisions.
# The Organization shall demonstrate that, progress towards achieving the management objectives, the impacts of management activities and the condition of the Management Unit, are monitored and evaluated proportionate to the scale, intensity and risk of management activities, in order to implement adaptive management.
# The Organization shall maintain and/or enhance the High Conservation Values in the Management Unit through applying the precautionary approach.
# Management activities conducted by or for The Organization for the Management Unit shall be selected and implemented consistent with The Organization's economic, environmental and social policies and objectives and in compliance with the Principles and Criteria collectively.

Chain of Custody certification

The FSC Chain of Custody (CoC) system allows the tracking of FSC certified material from the forest to the consumer. It is a method by which companies can show their commitment to the environment and responsible forest management. Only companies that have FSC chain of custody certification are allowed to use the FSC trademarks and labels to promote their products. The FSC label therefore provides a link between responsible production and responsible consumption and helps the consumer to make socially and environmentally responsible buying decisions.

Once a forest is certified it is important to be able to trace the products that come from it throughout the supply chain to ensure that any claims on the origin of the product are credible and verifiable. FSC chain of custody certification is a voluntary process. It is a tracking system that allows manufacturers and traders to demonstrate that timber comes from a forest that is responsibly managed in accordance with the FSC P&C. It tracks the flow of certified wood through the supply chain and across borders through each successive stage – including processing, transformation and manufacturing – all the way to the final product. It is up to a company to initiate the certification process by requesting the services of an accredited certification body to inspect its internal tracking procedures. Companies committing to FSC include home-improvement or DIY companies, publishers and retailers, amongst many others.

All operations that want to produce an FSC-certified product or want to make corresponding sales claims must comply with FSC's international standards for chain of custody. An operation must specify the range of products they wish to sell as FSC certified and promote with the FSC trademark. The certification body inspects the operation to ensure that controls are in place to identify eligible sources for the specified product range and to prevent certified and recycled material from mixing with material from unacceptable sources. If an operation complies with FSC standards, the company is issued an FSC chain of custody certificate. Major failure to comply with the standard will normally disqualify the candidate from certification or lead to de-certification.

Controlled wood certification

The FSC Mix label was introduced in 2004. It allows manufacturers to mix FSC-certified material with uncertified materials in FSC-labeled products under controlled conditions. It aims to avoid the use of wood products from "unacceptable" sources in FSC-labeled products. Unacceptable sources include illegally harvested wood, wood harvested in violation of traditional and civil rights, wood harvested in HCV forests and wood harvested from areas where genetically modified trees are planted.

Recognition in green building certification systems

FSC certified construction wood and construction products made from FSC certified wood can contribute to green building certification systems. Some green building certification systems are recognizing a FSC certification in general. Others award different scores to products with FSC 100, FSC MIX or FSC RECYCLED.

FSC certified wood products contribute to score up to 2 points in the LEED v4.1 credit 'Sourcing of Raw Materials'. In addition, FSC certified wood products can contribute to score up to 1 point in the LEED v4.1 pilot credit 'Social Equity within the Supply Chain'. BREEAM awards credits for FSC certified wood products in the Mat 03 credit. The BREEAM Guidance Note GN18 attributes different scores to FSC 100% (7 points) and FSC MIX / FSC RECYCLED (5 points). DGNB recognizes FSC certified wood products in the ENV1.3 credit. FSC Mix scores in the Quality Level 1.2 (up to 25 out of 100 points) and FSC 100 / FSC RECYCLED score in the Quality Level 1.3 (up to 70 out of 100 points. FSC RECYCLED also scores points in the Quality Level 2.2.

Competing certification schemes

There are a number of certification schemes for forest management apart from FSC certification.

The main competing forest certification system is the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), established by a number of stakeholders, including associations of the forest industry, pulp-and-paper production and forest owners in response to the creation and increasing popularity of FSC. PEFC has been criticized for having little influence from local people or environmental organizations, lack of transparency and non-objective requirements.

Other certification schemes include the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), the Malaysian Timber Certification Council, the Australian Forestry Standard, and Keurhout.

Criticism

Since it was founded, FSC has been criticized for a range of different reasons.

Concerns by founding NGOs and members

In the late 2000s, a number of NGOs and environmental organizations withdrew their support for FSC. These included FERN (2011), Friends of the Earth UK (2008), ROBINWOOD (2009), the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) (2011), and smaller groups such as Rainforest Rescue and the Association for the Ecological Defence of Galicia (ADEGA).

In this same period other NGO members and commenters issued critical evaluations of FSC's performance and made recommendations to improve the credibility of the organization. Greenpeace International published a 2008 report "Holding the line with FSC" focused on controversial certificates and ways forward.

FSC was also harshly criticized by Simon Counsell, one of its founding members, later the director of the Rainforest Foundation. In 2008, he described the FSC as the " Enron of Forestry". He cited case studies from six countries which suggested that in these cases FSC was not properly controlling accredited auditors or certifiers. The FSC reviewed the certificates in question, and showed that some of the initial investigations were justified. This resulted in the removal of the license to certify from the Thai company, Forest Industry Organization.

FSC-Watch is a website critical of FSC which is run by a group of people, including Simon Counsell, who are concerned about what they perceive as the constant and serious erosion of the FSC's reliability and credibility. Its website offers a wide range of extensive and detailed criticisms of FSC. FSC-Watch commonly accuses FSC of practices that are a form of greenwashing.

In 2008, the EcoEarth/Rainforest Portal, an Internet ecological news aggregation service, publicly questioned the FSC-endorsed policy of old-growth forest logging

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