Bridging Certification and Community Forestry through NTFPs: A Case Study from Nepal

Issue - For a variety of reasons, community forestry is not always well suited to existing forest certification schemes. Using the case of Nepal, this paper considers the extent to which promoting the trade in nontimber forest products can complement, or even provide an alternative to, forest certification for timber while promoting sustainable community forestry. The paper develops recent work on the interaction of transnational business governance (TBG) schemes to suggest how these two approaches to sustainable forest management can work together productively

Forest Certification: Toward Common Standards?

The forestry industry provides a good illustration of the active roles that industry associations, environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), national governments, and international organizations can play in developing and promoting codes of conduct that are formally sanctioned and certified. It also reflects some of the challenges of disseminating codes of conduct in developing countries and ensuring market benefits from certification. We describe the emergence of forest certification standards, outline current certification schemes, and discuss the role of major corporations in creating demand for certified products. We also discuss the limited success of certification and some of the obstacles to its adoption in developing countries. The current diversity of forest certification programs and ecolabeling schemes has created a costly, less-than-transparent system that has been largely ineffective in terms of the initial goals of reducing tropical deforestation and illegal logging. Some steps have been taken toward harmonization of different certification criteria as well as endorsement and mutual recognition among existing forest certification programs. However, it is unlikely that standardization alone can overcome other, more serious barriers to certification in developing countries.forest certification, codes of conduct, Forest Stewardship Council, PEFC, Sustainable Forestry Initiative, sustainable forest management

An Analysis of Non-State and State Approaches for Forest Certification in Mexico

The first author expresses thanks to CONACYT for her doctoral-awarded scholarship (Grant 362184)Mexico has had a non-state forest certification system under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) since it was initiated in 1993, and developed a new state-sponsored Mexican Forest Certification System (MFCS) that began in 2008. Several analyses have been made of FSC forest certification in Mexico, but none have summarized the new MFCS system or compared its standards with FSC. We compare the implementation of the non-state FSC market forest certification with the state-sponsored MFCS system in Mexico, and review literature on forest certification, focusing on all studies in Mexico. MFCS has had substantial enrollment of more than 902,802 ha by 2016, compared to 900,388 ha for the more-established FSC program. MFCS can be acceptable for stand-alone forest certification, and might be viewed as a stepwise path to FSC certification. The merits of both systems are analyzed in terms of standard content, likely sustainable forestry practices, access to markets, and community forestry enterprises.S

Financial viability of forest certification in industrial plantations: a case study from the Solomon Islands

Forest certification has been promoted to encourage sustainable use of natural forests. While its use in industrial plantation forests has not always been welcomed (World Rainforest Movement 2002), forest certification offers great opportunities in the tropics. This paper assesses the profitability of forest certification of an industrial hardwood plantation in the Solomon Islands by the Forest Stewardship Council. The results of this study suggest that industrial plantations can achieve significant financial benefits from sustainable forest management confirmed by a recognised certification scheme. This positive outcome will, however, depend on the marginal costs incurred by the plantation company to adapt its practices to meet sustainability requirements stipulated by the certification scheme, and the price premiums obtained by the firm. In the case of the Solomon Islands forestry, the additional costs of sustainable forest management and forest certification, including the transaction cost of forest certification, were far less than the market premium that was obtained from certified logs. The company’s costs would have had to increase by almost two thousand folds before certification could be regarded as financially not profitable. This case study thus demonstrates that it is possible for tropical plantations to have a ‘win win’ outcome from forest certification, achieving net financial benefit as well as ensuring sustainable forest managementThis item was commisioned by Asia Pacific School of Economics and Government, AN

Local consequences of applying international norms: differences in the application of forest certification in northern Sweden, northern Finland, and northwest Russia

Forest certification, developed in the early 1990s, is a process in which independent assessors grant use of the certification label to producers who meet certain environmental and social criteria set for their forest products. This label was quickly seen to offer a market advantage and to signal corporate social and environmental responsibility. This paper focuses on international norms pertaining to environmental and indigenous rights, as manifested in cases of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)- and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC)-compatible certification, and how these norms have been applied domestically and perceived locally in different states. Case studies are drawn from northern Sweden, northern Finland, and three regions in northwest Russia. The studies illustrate that the choice and implementation of certification type depend considerably on national infrastructure and market characteristics and result in substantial differences in the impact that international norms have at the local leve

Achieving sustainable forest management and certification in the southeast : Development of a distance learning course

The paper will summarize our new effort to develop an integrated distance education / professional education course on forest certification and sustainable forest management (SFM) in the Southeast. The course will present a practical, applied view of the elements of forest certification for private forestlands in the South- east, as well as a review of the SFM criteria and indicators. The innovative course design will present the material in five different modules, covering international SFM agreements, forest certification systems and processes, social and biological issues in certification, and certification process and record-keeping requirements

Comparing Attitudes and Perceptions of Forest Certification Among Foresters, Loggers, and Landowners in Mississippi

Forest certification plays an important role in the forest products industry in Mississippi. Approximately 17% of the state’s 19 million acres of forest land is certified under one of three major systems in the United States. More than two million acres are certified under Sustainable Forestry Initiative, more than one million acres are certified under American Tree Farm System and over 150,000 acres are certified under Forest Stewardship Council. The goal of forest certification is sustainable use of all forest resources, from timber to clean water to recreation. This goal can only be achieved if nonindustrial private forest landowners, loggers, and forestry professionals all agree on the concepts each system espouses. This project surveyed nonindustrial private landowners in Mississippi, members of the Mississippi Loggers Association, and members of the Mississippi Sustainable Forestry Initiative Implementation Committee, to test their levels of agreement on 12 different Likert Scales or sets of statements representing specific underlying concepts of forest certification. The three groups generally agreed on most aspects of forest certification. There were some significant differences between the groups based on the distribution of responses, however the scale averages never differed by more than 0.7 indicating that while the differences were significant, overall they were still fairly close in their understanding of certification concepts. There were a large number of non-industrial private landowners who were not aware of forest certification. This result has not changed since the last landowner study that was conducted in Mississippi regarding forest certification, almost 10 years ago

Competing for Legitimacy: The Development and Evolution of Forest Certification in Finland

Forest certification in Finland has developed and evolved in favor of the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes (PEFC) and not the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The Finnish Forest Certification System (FFCS as endorsed by PEFC) certification of forests in Finland has been achieved at an unprecedented rate and scale. This event, both in process and outcome, was highly contentious and politicized. Finland represents a microcosm of the current issues in forest certification and is ripe for study. However, few attempts have been made to explain why and how forest certification develops and evolves. This thesis sheds light on this deficiency by discussing key characteristics of the two rival schemes in Finland, postulating key factors explaining why certification developed in favor of PEFC and not FSC, and presenting an analysis of the ecological rigor of the two schemes. The results indicate that the associations that represent Finland’s small non-industrial private forest landowners have been immensely influential. Also, until there is a significant demand from the end consumer for FSC certified products, it appears that Finnish landowners and industry will continue to support the scheme with less rigorous standards, that is less intrusive and costly, and that is more politically acceptable

Prospect Theory and Tenure Reform: Impacts on Forest Management

We examine the role of risk and time preferences in how forest owners respond to forest certification. We test hypotheses from a two-period harvest model derived from prospect theory in the context of Fujian, China, where new forest certification started in 2003. Using survey and field experiment data, we find that certification resulted in reduced harvesting, and the effect was larger for households who are more risk averse and exhibited distorted probability weighting. In contrast, loss averse households increased harvesting after certification. These findings suggest that diverse individual preferences may be a source of impact heterogeneity for forest certification

The Fundamentals of Forest Certification

Published in Social and Political Dimensions of Forest Certification, Errol Meidinger, Christopher Elliott & Gerhard Oesten, eds.https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/book_sections/1189/thumbnail.jp