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Commonwealth
Forests | | |
 Certification
Certification is a procedure by which written assurance is given that a product, process or
service is in conformity with certain standards (ISO, 1996). Most of the certification schemes in
forestry are third-party verification schemes, under which an independent assessment of forest
management is carried out by an accredited third party, either against defined processes or
systems, or against the outcome or the quality of goods and services measured against
defined standards. The main certification scheme used in the Commonwealth is that of the
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), but there are four national schemes, the Australian Forestry
Standard (AFS http://www.forestrystandard.org.au
), the Canadian Standards Association
(CSA), the Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC http://www.mtcc.com.my
) and the
UK Woodland Assurance Standard (UKWAS http://www.ukwas.org.uk
) which includes the
FSC and the Pan-European Forest Process (PEFC). There is also a North American scheme,
the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI http://www.aboutsfi.org
). New Zealand is establishing its
own National Standard, which will be subject to independent verification (CFA Newsletter #31,
December 2005).
An approximate estimate of the area of forest certified in Commonwealth countries, derived
from Table 2.3, is 140 M ha, mainly natural forest but also plantations, that is about 17% of the
Commonwealth’s forest area. But the total area figure is out of date and is likely to have
increased considerably even since some of the recent country information was gathered. For
example, a comparison of some of the figures in Table 2.3 with FRA2000 show marked
increases.
It remains to be seen whether this rapid rate of increase will be maintained, but recognition of
certified
products by the general public is probably increasing; for example the public opinion survey
carried out by the Forestry Commission in 2005 showed that 44% of respondents had been
shopping for wood products in the last few years and of these respondents, 38% recognised
the FSC symbol and 8% recognised the PEFC symbol (Forestry Commission, UK. 2005).
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