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Despite the fact that still very few certification schemes are bringing labelled forest products onto the market, forest industry associations are showing interest in reciprocal agreements that would allow 'label swopping' between schemes with equivalent standards. Also some governments are keen on mutual recognition. Most NGOs do not believe mutual recognition is an option as the certification schemes are too different to allow them to mutually recognise each other as ‘similar’.

In February 2001 several NGOs issued a joint statement (Feb 2001, HTML) raising concerns about the risk of mutual recognition causing a lowering of standards in forest certification.

The existence of a variety of different schemes has created the need for governments and businesses to be able to judge the different schemes or to validate the different schemes. The best tool available for validating different schemes at the moment is Assessing forest certification schemes: A practical guide. This methodology was developed by the consultancy Proforest, with input from a number of other consultancies.