Signatories

Forest certification is a process which results in a written certificate being produced by an independent third party attesting to the location and management status of the forest in which the timber originated.

Certification is intended to provide an incentive for improved forest management and can thus be viewed as an economic instrument. As such, it is neither a panacea nor a replacement for regulations and legislation, but can only complement these tools.

Certification has two components:

Forest auditing: this involves inspection of the forest management unit on the ground against specified standards.

Product certification: to allow product labelling it is necessary to trace the chain-of-custody of a wood product from the forest to the customer.

Certification has two main objectives

1. To improve forest management;

2. To ensure market access for certified wood products.

• ensure that forest certification takes place at the forest management level (not at country level)
• be credible to consumers and environmental and social NGOs
• be based on objective and measurable environmental and social standards
• be based on reliable and independent assessment
• be independent of parties with vested interests
• be cost-effective and voluntary
• be transparent
• be equitable to developing countries and small forest owners.

At present the undersigned NGOs believe that the Forest Stewardship Council scheme is the only scheme that satisfies the above mentioned requirements. Therefore the undersigned NGOs support the FSC process and have contributed to a set of widely agreed principles for achieving economically viable, environmentally sound and socially responsible forest use. Although there is still room for improvement within the FSC system, undersigned NGOs continue to support the FSC scheme.

The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has developed the ISO 14001 standard which bases certification on the existence of an environmental management system in the organisation concerned. The ISO 14001 system is potentially compatible with the FSC system. They can and are being used together. However certification of an organisation's environmental management system without the use of external performance standards can lead to confusion. NGOs therefore do not support the ISO 14001 system as a system for forest certification by itself.

Labels of origin should not be called certification systems, as they do not fulfill any of the above mentioned criteria. NGOs are in general not supportive of labels or origin for the following reasons:

• they promote the status quo of forest management rather than providing an incentive for improvement.
• they are discriminatory between countries rather than between forest management units. Within almost every country there will be good as well as bad forest management practices.

• follow the two IPF recommendations "to play a clear role in encouraging transparency, non-discrimination and open access to voluntary certification systems" as well as "to make a clear distinction between a governments role as regulator, promoter and forest owner where certification is concerned"
• play an active role in eliminating the use of all unsubstantiated claims to the sustainability of wood products. The EC Directive 84/450/EEC should therefore be enforced.

Until a comprehensive analysis of the existing situation is made and a clear role for the EU has emerged, undersigned NGOs do not see a clear role for the European Commission in developing a specific EU certification or chain of custody system.