| European
Tropical Forest Research Network |
BEYOND TIMBER: CERTIFICATION OF NON-TIMBER FOREST PRODUCTS
By Patricia Shanley
Certification is part of a growing trend with regard to defining standards for social and environmental performance in natural resource management. Started in response to consumer demand for sustainably sourced products, the concept has taken hold in a number of sectors including the food, health care and forest product industries. In forestry, certification began in the wood products industry, only recently including non-timber forest products. Because the term non-timber forest products (NTFPs) encompasses such a vast array of goods, various certification schemes are being applied, with varied success and relevance. This review positions NTFPs within the context of sustainable forest product certification and within the development of broader standards and certification for NTFPs and related products (organics, authentication and quality control). There are broader implications of standards, for example as a tool to influence consumer choice, to form the basis of industry association standards (of collecting and management), corporate policies, and/or legislation.
There are 36 products that have standards established within the forest certification standards, 32 of them in Brazil. Certification has focused on products with commercial relevance but for which there is a good information base of management concerns and a known set of collectors whose activities can be monitored and confirmed. They are also products with a marketing chain to a product for which the NTFP is the main or primary ingredient.
Dilemma
Recent efforts to certify NTFPs raise questions about the impact of this market-based
tool on local producers and communities. Drawing from case studies in Latin
America, we find that there are many impediments to the successful implementation
of NTFP certification. These impediments range from unorganised and powerless
laborers to basic difficulties in commercialising NTFPs in the face of an undeveloped
demand for certified products among businesses and consumers. The next generation
of NTFP certification will be more complex due to faulty information on management
and biological characteristics of the species, multiple chains of collectors,
managers and processors, the volatility of NTFP markets and the importance of
many NTFPs which are only a small part of the final product to be marketed.
There are strong interests in developing standards from industry associations interested in the sustainability of the supply of threatened species and in preventing competition from lower-quality products. Health organisations and governments are increasingly concerned with standards, while producers seek clear guidelines for harvesting and management that can be communicated clearly and successfully applied to ensure their own income streams. In most cases there is a lot of conflicting information: a plethora of guidelines, the weakness and inconsistency of standards and a lack of integration into market chains or other trade labelling initiatives (organic or fair trade, for example).
Apart from a limited set of products, NTFP certification can be extremely costly as regards standards development and application to varied ecological settings. Even within a given region in a given country, standards can be impossible to apply where there are multiple types of collectors over dispersed areas with public tenure. Small producers may be unable to apply these standards due to a lack of information or lack of market return for their application. Particularly in the cosmetic industry where individual NTFPs are only a small portion of the final product, there is little market incentive to certify. In addition, some products can be quite vulnerable to product substitution or fashion and expensive processes of certification should only be applied to those NTFPs likely to maintain a reasonable market share over time.
Adjustments
There are a number of successful experiences that can be expanded to other products
- rattan, maple syrup, chicle, palm heart and wood carvings. For species which
are difficult to certify there are a number of alternatives which could be more
systematically applied to new countries and new markets, including ethnical
standards for collectors' associations, permit systems which coincide with collection
options and requirements, fair trade models and the provision of greater tenure
security to specific sets of collectors and producers. Parallel to this, government
regulations often need modifying in order to remove market barriers for small-scale
producers and to eliminate counterproductive permitting and taxation systems
that reduce the returns available to the producer.
It appears that the process of creating NTFP certification standards may create positive ripple effects among producers, traders, companies and policy makers by planting the seeds for a vision of more socially and environmentally responsible management of NTFP resources. We conclude that the ability of certification to bring about wider social change indirectly may prove to be of greater lasting impact to rural livelihoods and NTFP management than labeling and marketing.
Further information:
Patricia Shanley
CIFOR
P.O. Box 6596,
JKPWB, Jakarta 10065
Indonesia
E-mail: cifor@cgiar.org (general inquiries);
p.shanley@cgiar.org
Websites: http://www.cifor.cgiar.org
and http://www.forest-trends.org