The Forest Stewardship Council has recently issued a report casting doubt on the value of PEFC certification for its Controlled Wood standard. This comes at a time when the global community is preparing for next month’s Copenhagen climate conference, which is expected to hammer out a follow-up treaty for the Kyoto Protocol.
Forests and their vast potential to contribute to tackling climate change have been high on the negotiators’ agenda. Finding the right mechanisms to stop deforestation and forest degradation will be fundamental to incorporating forests into a post-Kyoto treaty, and forest certification is one proven tool to promote sustainable forest management.
The UN has warned that growth of the certified forest area has stagnated at 8% globally since 2006 and to date it is mainly in developed countries, not developing countries where certification could arguably have the most positive impact. Our challenge is to make sustainable forest management and forest certification a reality globally if forests are to fulfil a much needed role in mitigating climate change.
This is a time when collaboration, rather than confrontation, is needed to take advantage of the benefits of the approaches that the different certification systems offer to society. Both systems have been studied exhaustively by impartial external experts, including the UK government’s Central Point of Expertise on Timber, and enjoy widespread acceptance.
Sustainable forest management requires a holistic approach. By whittling down the PEFC’s more than 200 sustainability requirements to the five handpicked criteria in its Controlled Wood standard, the FSC restricts fibre from other responsible sources, making it more difficult for companies to manufacture certified products.
While we could also certainly identify considerable gaps in FSC when comparing it with our system, we see no benefit to anyone in doing so. PEFC will continue to accept FSC-certified wood in its products. There is too much at stake for society as a whole for certification systems to engage in a cat fight.
We are all working toward the same shared goal, the promotion of sustainable forest management worldwide, and we should be celebrating the different perspectives we bring to the task. In the face of climate change, we must maintain focus on offering constructive solutions to address the world’s environmental and social challenges.
