Mike Virga started the ‘top-of-the-bill’ seminar at the AHEC European Convention in dramatic style. ‘If anyone here is expecting a fist fight,’ he said, ‘you might be disappointed.’
The reason why the audience might have expected the occasion to get a bit turbulent was because the title was ‘Hardwood Certification’ and the main speakers were Mr Virga of the American Forestry and Paper Association-backed Sustainable Forestry Initiative, Hank Cauley of the Forest Stewardship Council, US, and Ben Gunneberg of the Pan European Forestry Certification Council.
As it turned out, nobody came to blows. But following updates on each scheme, a forthright exchange of views made it clear that the industry-inspired SFI and PEFC schemes and the NGO-initiated FSC certification system were still some way off mutual recognition.
Mr Virga insisted that, although there was no real demand for certification from US consumers, lobbying from the green movement and its influence on big-name retailers and manufacturers had put the pressure on the American forestry sector.
Against this background, the aim of the SFI scheme was to integrate environmental protection and commercial reality – ‘ensuring sustainable manufacture of affordable products’. It now has 100 million acres of forest land ‘enrolled’, and a further 25 million ha registered under the affiliated Tree Farm System.
A major stress of the SFI is connection with the industry on the ground, and so far 56,000 loggers have taken part in its training programmes.
The scheme is also gearing up for the launch of on-product labelling in 2002 and a marketing programme that, said Mr Virga ‘will knock your socks off’.
According to Ben Gunneberg, the PEFC believes certification schemes need ‘maximum consensus’ among all stakeholders. It endeavours to achieve this by acting as a mutual recognition umbrella for national programmes.
‘The PEFC is building on these existing national multi-stakeholder schemes – anything else would have been reinventing the wheel.’
So far the PEFC has 19 schemes on board (with 39.39 million ha of forest certified) and others, including the UK’s, are lining up to join.
The organisation, he added, continued to encourage stakeholder input and to enhance transparency.
‘Our website carries comprehensive information about the PEFC, the national schemes and participating businesses,’ he said. ‘We are also working on a WAP link so you can key in PEFC product licence numbers and obtain full supplier details.’
According to Mr Cauley, the FSC was launched to ‘rebuild the social contract between the forestry industry and the consumer’. It has 24 million ha of forest certified, with 1,300 companies holding chain of custody certification and 2,000 labelled products on the market.
Openness, said Mr Cauley, was paramount for the FSC, and that included a willingness to air its problems.
‘The recent pulling of an FSC certificate in Indonesia showed the scheme working,’ he said. He also insisted that the FSC was not dominated by hard-line greens. ‘We want to bring everyone to the moderate middle ground,’ he said.
From the lively question and answer session that followed, it was clear that the key interest of the audience was how the FSC, SFI and PEFC differed and when they would start talking mutual recognition.
Mr Virga and Mr Gunneberg said that a central characteristic of their schemes separating them from the FSC was their aim to bring certification within the reach of smaller businesses through such tools as group or regional accreditation.
Mr Cauley admitted this had been the case, but said the FSC was also now looking to the option of group certification.
On mutual recognition, Mr Gunneberg said that the differences between the PEFC and FSC did not mean they could not talk and he described environmentalist claims that having numerous certification schemes caused consumer confusion as a ‘red herring’.
Mr Virga also pointed to the independent comparison of the FSC and SFI schemes by the US Meridian Institute which showed ‘our programmes are not that far apart’.
But, he maintained: ‘As long as the FSC maintains that it is the Holy Grail of certification, we have a problem.’
‘And the greens’ attacks on other schemes, such as the Greenpeace Anything Goes report, do not help the environment, the forest sector or timber and the sooner you [the FSC] do something about it the better,’ said Mr Gunneberg.
Mr Cauley insisted that the FSC tried to dissuade its supporters from such attacks. But the organisation regarded certification as a competition’ it wanted to win.
He also said that there was no intention of talking about mutual recognition until there were more similarities between the other schemes and the FSC programme.
He maintained the Meridian report had shown up the divides between the SFI and FSC schemes. And to make his point, he held up a copy with the differences highlighted in red.
