Talk:Forest Stewardship Council

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Diamond's Criticism of Rivals

The "Criticism" section could use a source. Could we mention the companies' rationale for working with the FSC and similar organizations, other than desire to save the planet? Diamond's book argues that it's a useful form of marketing: a company can make its product more distinctive (thus creating a type of monopoly) by offering the seal-of-approval of a group like FSC, so that consumers will pay more for the product. Diamond cites a study saying so. He criticizes rival organizations by saying they're the same type of marketing strategy without the high standards that make it meaningful. (Would that qualify as a type of astroturfing?) Maybe we could even quote the book, if there's no better source explaining the argument. I gave away my copy, though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kris Schnee (talk • contribs)

[edit] Text extensions and edits of January 2008

First, thanks and congratulations to Kat Germanis for his efford to improve this important article. Unfortunately, the result is not completely convincing due to then following circumstances:

• Style: Happens to sound much like a marketing presentation, like an advertisement; for example, the use of judgemental words ("...unique..."), or half-truths "...is growing rapidly" (well, nfortunately not in comparison to other certification schemes). POV is thus created in a subtile manner.
• FSC is not designed to deal with global warming and illegal logging.
• CoC-Certification is not up to date (mixed standard is obsolete, now changing towards input-output-balancing), and so are passages, which relate to the quality of the FSC-system (wood tracing...).
• References (besides the fsc web site) could be suspected to not represent a neutral view; scientific sources are easily available and should be preferred
• Too many weblinks?
• Relevant information is missing. Especially the aspects concerning FSC's weaknesses and the arguments for the lacking broad acceptance esp. in Europe are not expressed adequately (legitimation of specific stakeholder participation, construction of an eventually redundant system of credibility in countries where administrative functions and law enforement are being carried out on a satisfying level, eventual unsuitability for small-scale family business etc...).
• formatting could be improved

Don't get me wrong; I am no anti-FSC-POV-pusher, but the article really needs to be improved. I hope that I'll be able to handle that during the upcoming days. --Wladmeister (talk) 15:58, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your constructive comments. In general, this is by no means the final version – there is much more to include!

I address your comments in the same order:

• Style: This should sound neutral and not like a marketing piece! I have made some changes. Please identify any others. Re the half-truth ‘FSC is growing rapidly’, this is a fact. Last year the area of forest grew by 10 million hectares to 94 million hectares. In 2007 FSC CoC grew by 40% which speaks for itself, and no comparison is being made here to other certification systems.I dont see that this needs changing.
• Global warming and illegal logging: FSC improves forest management practices and creates incentives to keep forests intact, and thus it contributes to the prevention of deforestation and so also the release of carbon dioxide (deforestation releases an estimated ¼ or 1/3 of global carbon emissions). And FSC most definitely deals with legality and goes well beyond that. Legality is the absolute minimum requirement for FSC forest management certification. FSC provides international standards that raise the bar for social and environmental practices - what may be legal in one country could be illegal in another. I would like to include a section on impacts at a later stage.
• CoC: I made some changes to the CoC section. I am not sure exactly where you are referring to. Could you identify these before changing them?
• References: There are many references available to support this text. I have since added more scientific reports since your comments. Everyone is welcome to add to this!! There is a lot of text there. Please also build on references within Wikipedia.
• Weblinks: We could delete all the external links referring to FSC national initiatives in the Official FSC Sites section. This information is already available in section 3 ‘Global and Local’ – I thought it was useful.
• There is still information missing, your right! This is most definitely a working document, and by no means finished. Please feel free to add to this. In doing so, we must maintain a global and balanced overview. I would like to include a section on FSC in the tropics and small businesses. I suggest a separate section called FSC impacts where we can address social, environmental and economic impacts.
• Formatting: This should be easy to read. What suggestions to you have? Please feel free to make improvements.

--Kat Germanis (talk) 3pm 17 Jan 2008 —Preceding comment was added at 14:01, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Good job! I hope I'll be able to review it within the upcoming days. Furthermore, I will try to give some text input, too, of course. Cheers, --Wladmeister (talk) 20:27, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, some comments:

• Formatting: There were some short passages in bold, which I de-bolded. Unfortunately, I'm not so familiar with the standards of the English wikipedia... Well, I don't much care and it is comparably unimportant.
• References: The reference link to Lang's publication of GTZ is broken. It was cited a few times. I thus removed it.
• Style: We have already talked about phrases like "rapidly growing". Yes, for sure, FSC is growing; however, it is important to compare: On the international level, there is only PEFC and ISO (and ISO does not really count). Right? As far as I know, almost 200 mio ha are already certified by PEFC, that is a) more and b) growing faster since it started only in 1999 (I do not say that in a judging way, but these are the figures). Also, when we say "rapidly growing", we should take into account a percentage of forest coverage on the corresponding regional or national level, instead of world wide figures, because all other certification schemes are applied only on a regional or national level. Is FSC growing rapidly in comparison with MTCC, for example? That is why I would not favour such expressions.
• Style (II): I made some revisions on phrases like : "XY guarantees that..." (not, because I wouldn't believe it, I personally think is probably true.) Mechanisms providing a guarantee - that is an ideal. When ENGOs like the rainforest foundation launched critics addressed to FSC, they were normally claiming that the guarantee was not ensured.
• CoC: I heard that the new standard intruduced input-output balancing. I have not checked if this is true, but I suppose it is. It's obviously basically the same principle like the market of "green" electricity: You put a certain amount of certified timber into the system, and you have an according output of certified wooden products, but the concrete product that you hold in your hands is not necessarily from a FSC-certified FMU. This is why all passages, which refer to the chain of custody, may need revision.
• Illegal Logging and global warming: I added the phrase "directly or indirectly". Why? You are right that the CWS prohibts illegally logged wood in a FSC-certified mixed-standard wooden product. But the FSC certification of SFM does not necessarily lead to a decrease of illegal logging (because illegally harvested timber can be traded on other international or only on the national markets, because illegal logging for increasing circumstances of lifelihood remains attractive, because illegal logging due to poverty and for getting fire wood usually cannot be prevented by at all...). The contribution of FSC certification to combat global warming is an important synergy effect that is due to avoided deforestation; but is FSC especially designed for fighting global warming...? I am not so sure about that. BTW, I think the calculation of up to 1/3 of carbon emissions through deforestation and forest degradation is a figure that is not common. The IPCC reports 17,4%, and even ENGOs calculate "only" between 18 and 25 %. Well, however...
• On missing information: I would find it very interesting to understand how group certification can be suitable for applying SFM certification on small scale business.

In my opinion, the first couple of sections are really good. They explain quite well what FSC is. And that's the idea of the wikipedia. What I regard as crucial are the last paragraphs: "International recognition and wide-ranging support", especially "Why do many stakeholders support FSC?". They sound very POV-like, just as if they were directly taken from the FSC website. Also, the information there is not always completely correct: For example, PEFC was not founded by the forest industry alone, but also by European forest owners' associations. In my opinion, after considering different aspects, it would be best to either

a) delete the whole section, or to

b) extend the article on the critical discussions on the various certification schemes.

On b): Extending the article is really difficult, because this debate is quite complex! One has to dig deeply into the matter of certification of SFM to understand where the differences are. For example, it would be necessary to explain the different nature of process-based certification and performance-based approaches. Also, it would be necessary to explain why certain stakeholders do not support FSC, or why some support FSC and other schemes; e.g. out of cost-effectiveness, of weeknesses of the early CoC concerning marketing aspects... There are the aspects of stakeholder participation (one of the typical arguments, for example: "Why does one environmental NGO have the same weight in the council like a forest owners' association?"). Then, there is the broad acceptance of a certification scheme as an indicator on how "good" it really is. And then, there are aspcets of green washing etc etc...

In short words: The article's aim must not be to convince the reader of the quality of FSC, but just to explain what FSC is. That is IMO enough. Explanations towards strengths of FSC makes it complicated when we want to maintain a neutral point of view.

BTW, I think there is still no article on SFM-certification in general in the English wikipedia. Somebody should create it.

However, you have done a nice piece of work! I hope I'll be more constructive in future :-)

--Wladmeister (talk) 20:45, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rearranging the introduction

The introductory section is now much too long, and so sections from there should be moved to other parts of the article.Hectorguinness (talk) 10:13, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it covers all the key issues in enough - but not too much - depth to give a basic understanding - who, what, where, why and how. I dont think we should remove too much from there. What are your suggestions? Maybe cut back a bit on the history? --Kat Germanis (talk) 3.15, 17 Jan 2008 —Preceding comment was added at 14:14, 17 January 2008 (UTC)