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7. Beyond certification: re-assessing the tool

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7.1 Intro

The discussion of problems highlighted by the paper brought up several concerns about the effectiveness of the current certification system in certain situations, and possible alternatives that might be introduced. This title was formulated in an attempt to develop the issues further. It is linked to the first title ("developing and testing a certification programme for small forests") but encompasses a broader range of ideas because it takes the acknowledgement that the current system may not be ideal for universal application as a starting point. The suitability of certification as a tool which can be applied to all types of enterprise was also debated, and various suggestions for re-thinking the system were made.

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7.2 Key Questions

1. What is the future of certification?
2. Are certification and sustainable forest management relevant to all sizes and types of enterprise?
3. With respect to sustainable forest management, what is the threshold for forest size or fragmentation below which certification doesn't have a meaning?
4. Is there a (possibly higher) threshold below which certification does not make financial sense (given the low environmental risk)?
5. What alternatives are there?
6. What is the fitness of certification to address the problems?
7. Is this a technical or political problem?
8. What mechanisms need to be developed in the future to allow forestry enterprises which fall below this threshold to sell their wood?

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7.3 Workshop discussion report

What is the future of certification?
Two key aspects were identified which relate to the future of certification. The first was that steps should be taken to bring certification into the "mainstream" and the second was that in areas where the current certification system is not considered applicable, alternatives should be formulated.

It was noted that in developing countries especially, certification is a tool which is still in its infancy. The first priority in developing countries should be to bring wider areas of forest under certification schemes and make forest certification mainstream. The amount of tropical forestry that is made up of small businesses was estimated at 20 or 30%, and it was proposed that this area should be given particular attention.
Limitations of certification system
In response to the question "Is there a threshold of forest or business size or type below which certification and sustainable forest management have no meaning?", it was argued that sustainable forest management is always relevant, and in theory, certification standards should always have a meaning, but in practice there may well be a limit in their application. Certification might not be a tool that it is practical to apply to (for example) very small or fragmented forests. When the forest area is simply too small to justify the cost of certification, then certification as a tool for forest management is no longer relevant because it cannot be applied to such a small area.

For example, a (hypothetical) public authority owning a tree-lined road would be unable to get the wood certified because the expense for such a small area would be prohibitive under the current system, but they would be unable to sell it because there would be no demand for wood that was not certifiedand.

It was argued that if the scenario arose where certain enterprises were excluded from markets because they were unable to attain certification, it would be so far in the future as to be unimportant at this stage. However, several examples were given which indicate that the problem outlined above might actually be encountered relatively soon. For example, in the UK, small businesses sell timber to processors that make chipboard and need certified material. These processors are the only market for wood chippings and small producers are already in danger of losing out because they can't afford certification so they may become unable to sell their products.

Another example of small scale producers encountering problems in the UK is that of charcoal producers, who almost HAVE to be certified to be able to sell now. Woodmark recently certified a 5 ha area of riverside alder coppice, using the UK generic standard which had been adapted slightly with few difficulties to enable certification. However, certification of an area this small cannot make financial sense: in this case certification was possible for other reasons. There is a definite need to find a solution so that these individuals (who are managing their forests well) are not pushed out of the market because of competition with larger, certified forest areas.
What alternatives are there?
A certification system is needed that can be applied universally but that is not too complicated, and in it's current format this is a problem. A proposal was made to define the characteristics of forests that cannot be certified by setting a threshold size. If certification loses it's meaning below this threshold, a different approach should be adopted. If those areas which fall outside the size category which it is possible to certify still produce wood which becomes difficult to sell because of the certification system, this poses another problem.

Various possibilities were suggested for alternative models.
 It was deemed unrealistic to apply the same standards to an area of tropical rainforest, a charcoal coppice and an area of forest in Canada, but it is also important to "show the world" that all the forest areas are being managed in a responsible way. If there were two different certificates that meant the same thing to the market (i.e. that the wood is from a sustainable managed forests) but that entailed different standards, as a whole sustainable forestry would be promoted, and small foresters would not be forced out of the system.

However, it was also argued that unless forests are all assessed in the same way, the label loses its meaning: management should be good everywhere, whether it is in the northern hemisphere or in the tropics, and we should not change the standards for sustainable forest management. In addition, there is a danger that if you make allowances for small businesses they will no longer make an effort to meet the standards.

However, when the forests are too small and there is no sense in certifying, small forest owners are faced with the problem of trying to sell to a market demanding a label. We will solve this problem not by trying to create different (and complicated) levels of certification, but by finding a way to give access to the market without devaluing the label that already exists. Group certification may be a way to address this problem.
Ways forward
It was suggested that, assuming that certification is a good idea, we could ask the question "What is the optimum certification system that meets the demands of small forest enterprises?". If the answer to this is radically different to the current system, we should use a different system. If not it would be more sensible to make adaptations to the existing system.

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7.4 Potential Collaborators

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7.5 Potential Funding Bodies

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7.6 Solutions & uptake pathways

n.a.

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7.7 Inventory of ongoing research

Research topic 7 : Beyond certification: re-assessing the tool
Organisation/Name Country Topic Mentioned by
IIED
Kirsti Thornber		 Various (especially Honduras, Bolivia, Mexico, PNG, Zambia, S. Africa Study of impacts of certification on forests, stakeholders and markets. At forest level, national level and supply chain. Highlighting constraints to certification as well as benefits - may feed into this work .
FCAG (EC DG8 Forest Certification Advisory Group)
Steve Bass, IIED		 . Will be extracting some of the lessons/experiences of EC certification projects .
WB/WWF . Steve Bass (IIED) and Markku Simula (Indufor) background paper: overview of certification, for meeting 9-11 Nov. 1999. Looking beyond FSC, at lessons learned, different purposes of certification, etc. Kirsti Thornber


We welcome your comments and additions to this inventory. Please contact etfrn@etfrn.org.

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7.8 Research concept notes

not yet available

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