In most tropical countries, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is the lead forest certification scheme.
Worldwide, 19 million ha of tropical and subtropical forest are FSC certified, representing 11% of the global total covered by our Principles and Criteria. That means civil and indigenous rights are respected, areas of high social and environmental conservation value are maintained or enhanced, natural forests are not converted, highly hazardous pesticides and genetically modified trees are prohibited and the amount of harvesting allowed is defined. Of this area, about 60% is in natural forests.
Latin America has the highest number of FSC-certified tropical forests, located mostly in Brazil and Peru, and in terms of individual countries, Brazil, Gabon and the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) have the largest.
It may seem that 11% of FSC certified forest being tropical is a low figure. However, many tropical forest operations have to make major changes to their working practices to comply with FSC requirements. Looking at the number of certificates paints a different picture: one in four are given to forests in the tropics.
Certification in tropical forests is more difficult and challenging. Besides the changes in work practice needed, weak governance – a lack of forest and related law enforcement and appropriate land use planning and tenure regulation – makes management complex. So we recognise the need to develop further tools and mechanisms to progress the situation.
As part of our increasing efforts, FSC International hosted a meeting in Bonn in May to develop our strategy for tropical countries. It brought together FSC members, stakeholders, forest owners and scientists representing the timber industry, as well as environmental groups, forest workers and smallholders.
The meeting identified where more progress is needed. For example, international governmental mechanisms, such as the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative and EU Timber Regulation (EUTR), must deliver identification and eradication of illegally logged tropical wood on the market, which competes with responsibly harvested products. Also, consumers must be educated to understand the link between their purchasing behaviour and the state of tropical forests.
In addition, FSC’s smallholder finance programme and Modular Approach Programme towards certification must be developed to be more accessible to all kinds of forest ownership tenure systems. And we must ensure better co-operation between FSC, environmental organisations and wood-processing industries to accelerate tropical certification’s progress.
