Forest Stewardship Council

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Forest Stewardship Council is a non-profit organization based in Bonn, Germany. The Council's stated mission is "to promote environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world's forests". People interested in the sustainable consumption of timber, lumber, paper or other forest products can seek to acquire FSC-certified products. FSC certification is also sometimes used to demonstrate sustainable management of forest for carbon sequestration purposes.

This membership association was founded in 1993 and is funded by various businesses, governments, foundations, and environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, FERN and the WWF, as well as by accreditation fees. Major decisions are taken in a General Assembly, which meets every three years. Through consultative processes, FSC develops standards and policy for sustainable management of forests, and accredits certification bodies to assess candidate forests for certification.

Any timber company or other organization that wishes to become FSC-certified and bear their logo must first contact an accredited third party representative of the FSC. The FSC does not directly certify forests but certifies the auditors that do certify forests. Certification representatives then inspect the practices and maintenance of the forestry resource. The final step is to ensure that products made with lumber coming from FSC-accredited forests end up with the FSC-certified logo; chain of custody certificates are used to track the products from forest to final point of sale.

Jared Diamond's Collapse praises FSC as a collaboration of environmentalists and business for a sustainable economy and compares it to similar organizations created by timber business that, in his opinion, do not keep their standards so high. The Marine Stewardship Council is a similar organization covering sustainable fishery. It has attracted less commercial and consumer support, though.

1 Critics
2 Competing forest certification system
3 External links

[edit] Critics

Family forest owner's associations and farmers have criticized FSC being too dominated by the environmental groups. Also

some see FSC as a shrewd move by environmental groups to control and manipulate the international market for wood products
some view certification as thinly veiled corporate marketing

[edit] Competing forest certification system

PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes) is the main competing forest certification system. Mutual recognition of FSC and PEFC certified material in the chain of custody has not yet happened. However, the national Forest Management Standard in the United Kingdom - UKWAS - is both accredited by FSC and endorsed by PEFC. Both FSC and PEFC deliver UK government criteria for legal and sustainable sourcing of timber products.

[edit] External links

[edit] Official FSC sites

[edit] Assessments

Footprints in the Forests: A FERN's assessment of 8 forest certification schemes (2004)
Behind the Logo: A FERN's environmental and social assessment of four forest certification schemes - the FSC, PEFC, SFI and CSA (2001)
FERN's site on certification