North America’s Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) has been hailed as the fastest-growing certification scheme at a UN/ECE timber committee meeting in Geneva.
Last year the SFI programme grew by a staggering 162% and now covers more certified forest than the Forest Stewardship Council scheme.
A total of 45 million ha are enrolled, of which 25 million ha are third party certified. A further 11 million ha are pending, while 67,403 personnel have received training under an SFI outreach programme.
Meanwhile, SFI’s website, www.sfiprogram.info, will be launched soon, giving links to other sites relating to sustainable management of forests.
London-based Turnstone Communications Ltd, responsible for the distribution of information on the SFI programme in Europe, will widen its net to include Asian countries in support of a scheme designed to offer SFI-certified material to the world’s forest products markets. SFI will also exhibit at Interzum, Cologne, in May for the first time.
