Certification of good forest management represents a new approach in the global effort to sustain our diverse forest ecosystems. Sustainability, a central tenet of certification, is a complex concept, best thought of as a goal to be strived for and redefined in the process. Elements of sustainability with which most would agree include: maintenance of ecological functions and biological diversity of the forest ecosystem; assurance that people who inhabit or work in the forest receive a fair share of the income from forest management; and financial returns from forest management and value-added activities that are profitable and competitive with conversion of forestland to alternative uses.

Any new idea is likely to be controversial and generate a measure of public uncertainty. This is particularly the case when the idea has major financial implications, advocates a new balance by featuring conservation instead of protection, and signals a shift in emphasis from "command-and-control" regulation of forest use to market-based incentives (Kiker and Putz 1997). The market for certified products is relatively new and small compared with the overall wood trade, there are few brokers, and as yet there are no trade magazines and few product shows. As a result, signals between consumers and producers were at first weak and mixed--evidence of a truly emerging market.

Conscientious consumers are understandably confused. Not many years ago environmental organizations were advocating boycotts on the purchase of tropical woods as a "save-the-rain-forest" measure. In response to pressure, some 200 municipalities in the United States banned the use of tropical woods in public construction. The movement has been even stronger in Europe. Recently, major environmental organizations have reassessed the effect of timber boycotts. Factors considered have included fairness to developing countries and the probability that bans would devalue tropical timber and thus provide additional pressure for conversion of forestland to crops and pasture. The resultant shift to the new, market-based approach has moved quickly.

In 1990 the first forest certification took place, with a teak plantation in Indonesia certified as well managed by SmartWood, a program of the New York-based Rainforest Alliance. The Woodworkers' Alliance for Rainforest Protection in the United States proposed the creation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in 1992; the FSC founding assembly was held in late 1993; and the council began to accredit certifiers in 1995 (Viana and others 1996). Although certification was first conceived as a tool for saving tropical forests, representatives from the tropics were quick to point out that logging practices in temperate and boreal forests are, if anything, more destructive than is logging in tropical forests.

On a global scale the FSC, which is based in Oaxaca, Mexico, continues to be the leading certification organization. Its goals are to promote environmentally responsible, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of forests through the establishment of worldwide standards for good forest management. The FSC accredits organizations that in turn offer independent, third-party certification of forest operations. There are now six accredited certifiers, and at least five more are under review. More than 16 million hectares have been certified in thirty countries (Table I; Figure 1) (FSC 1999). Certifiers also audit and issue chain-of-custody certificates to added-value processors and retailers to assure that any product sold with an FSC label can be traced back to a well-managed forest. The FSC seeks to have its logo inspire as much confidence among environmentally conscientious consumers as "UL Listed" does among safety-conscious buyers of electrical equipment (Figure 2).

FSC certification of good forest management has four distinguishing characteristics. First, it is voluntary: A forest management operation chooses to engage the services of a certifier and may allow its certificate to lapse at any time. Second, it is performance based: The observed performance in the field is measured against a set of common ecological, social, and economic principles and criteria (FSC 1996). Third, certification is largely market based, with demand driven by a combination of consumers, environmental-activist pressure on retailers, and producer perceptions of future consumer and retailer demand, in addition to individual and corporate decisions that good forest management is the "right thing to do." Fourth, the FSC seeks balance in its approach to sustainable management through a governance structure composed of environmental, social, and economic chambers, each internally balanced in representation from countries of the "North" (developed; temperateboreal) and of the "South" (developing; tropical).

Within the broad framework of the FSC'S principles and criteria, national or regional standards are being developed to address specific ecological, social, and economic conditions in order to provide additional guidance to the certifier. Sweden was the first to have its national standards approved by the FSC. The Bolivian standards have also been approved.

The Forest Management Trust, a not-for-profit corporation registered in Florida,[1] has submitted for final review the regional standards for the southeastern United States, one of the eleven U.S. regions engaged in developing standards. This exercise demonstrated the importance of recognizing regionally distinct cultural, social, economic, and ecological differences within the broader framework of the FSC principles. Forestland owners in the Southeast often perceive certification, though voluntary, as "foreign" interference with their property rights (Parker and others 1999). In the Northeast and Appalachia, concerns relate to efficiency in certifying relatively small woodlots, while in the Northwest old growth and clear-cuts are critical issues. Current information on the overall certification process, principles and criteria, and certifiers is available at the FSC Web site, [http://www.fscoax.org]. Information on certification in the United States is maintained by the FSC-U.S. at [http://www.fscus.org].

FSC certification depends on the validity of three basic premises: that, given a credible claim, most consumers prefer a product from a well-managed, environmentally and socially sustainable forest operation rather than the product of a logger who runs roughshod over the forests and the rights of forest dwellers; that retailers will capitalize on this consumer preference and advertise their stocks of products from well-managed forests; and that, given the right signals, retailers will transmit this demand for products from well-managed forests to their brokers and forest-product suppliers. Market-driven certification has made remarkable strides in strengthening the long and complex value chain between the managed forest and the conscientious consumer. The progress made is evident in the following vignettes:

• Consumers who purchase FSC-certified forest products have their confidence in the validity of labeling claims reinforced by having access to reports from independent certifiers. In more practical terms, consumers can rely on the endorsement of forest management certification by widely known environmental organizations, including the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
• Certified forest management operations receive public recognition as good environmental citizens. Regulatory agencies can assume that a firm is obeying the law--unless there is overt evidence to the contrary--because FSC principles require that all laws relating to the environmental and social aspects of a firm's forest operation be obeyed, whether effectively enforced or not. Performance is audited annually by the certifier.
• Certified operations receive the tangible reward of access to markets that are open only to certified products. This is nowhere more evident than in Europe, where the WWF has led in the formation of buyers' groups that are pledged to purchase certified products (WWF 1999). In Great Britain, B&Q, a leading home-improvement retailer, has become a major purchaser of certified products and will purchase them exclusively beginning in the year 2000.
• In a 9 March 1999 press release, Home Depot, a member of the U.S. Certified Forest Products Council, announced its endorsement of "independent, third-party forest certification." Given the massive demand that this $30 billion company is capable of generating, it will take several years for certified producers to bring the requisite forest area under certified management. Home Depot has recently hired the president of the Scandinavian furniture manufacturer IKEA to head its international expansion program. This move has the potential for creating national and regional markets for certified products outside North America.
• Insurers and financial organizations are becoming cautious in dealings with firms that cannot document their performance in forest management due to the potential for legal suits and bad publicity. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation requires that any U.S. firm seeking loan guarantees or financing for forest extraction acquire and maintain independent certification of its forest management by an "organization accredited by an international accreditation body (such as the Forest Stewardship Council)" (OPIC 1998). The Andean Development Corporation requires that loan applicants for forestry projects be FSC certified.
• The World Bank-WWF Alliance for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use was launched in 1997 with the ambitious goals of bringing an additional 50 million hectares of forestland under effective protection and bringing 200 million hectares of forest under independently certified management. The numbers of hectares are less relevant than are the implications of the policy position taken by the World Bank, an organization not noted for early endorsement of "radical" environmental schemes. This is evidence that certification has become a mainstream issue.
• British Columbia-based McMillan Bloedel, one of North America's larger timber companies, has broken ranks with a B.C. industry alliance formed to resist pressures from the environmental community and is seeking FSC certification (Hayward 1998). McMillan Bloedel is the first major firm to break ranks with the heretofore solid bloc of large Canadian and U.S. firms and to join smaller certified companies, such as the Collins Pine Company in California and Seven Islands Land Company in Maine. The subsequent acquisition of the Canadian company by Weyerhaeuser, in June 1999, injects a new dynamic, given the U.S. firm's past lack of enthusiasm for the FSC. The most notable European firm to become certified is Sweden's Assi Doman.
• When the Bolivia Sustainable Forestry project was designed in 1994, the FSC had been in existence for less than a year. As something of a gamble, the designers of the project specified that its assistance to forest enterprises would be conditional on the companies and communities making a commitment to seek certification. The designers were aware that the FSC principles and criteria were more demanding and had the potential for greater international credibility than did the environmental regulations of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the funding agency. Four years later, more than 1 million hectares either have been certified or are in the process of becoming so (Nittler and Nash 1999).

Advocacy of FSC certification is a delicate balancing act among environmental, social, and economic interests. The dominant actors have been the environmental community, which sees certification as a tool for conserving forest ecosystems outside protected areas. Environmental advocates are supported, particularly in developing countries, by social activists who see certified management primarily as a means of strengthening community-based forestry and reinforcing tenure claims and secondarily as a means of assuring workers' and forest dwellers' rights and increasing economic benefits for the poor from large concessionaires' forest operations. Less effectively represented, but critical to the success of the balancing act, are commercial timber interests, which must find certified management more attractive than conventional logging. If timber companies fail to make money in certified forestry, the whole elaborate construct falls apart.

Certification has costs for training, forest and ecological inventories, preparation of management plans, and maintenance of records, as well as certification assessment and annual audits. There must be a continuing dialog between business interests in the economic chamber and the environmental and social chambers to assure that a balance is maintained between the ideal and the economically feasible. Ironically, the magnitude of market share and green premiums that attract forest enterprises to certification depends on the extent to which their operations can be credibly differentiated from business-as-usual logging. The credibility and magnitude of the differentiation is what energizes the environmental and social organizations that educate consumers and directly influence forest-product purchasing decisions by retailers. Some organizations effectively use the carrot: the WWF organizes buyers' groups and promotes the benefits of certification. Other organizations use negative publicity about environmental behavior to convince producers and retailers of the virtues of certification. Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network have been particularly effective stick wielders.

Proponents of participation in forestry by peasant and indigenous communities see certification as a tool for fostering economic development and promoting alternatives to deforestation for agriculture. Some 2 million hectares of community and indigenous forest operations have been certified in tropical countries, including five communities in the Peten of Guatemala in mid-1998. Should social activists and consumers expect to see certified products from community forests at Home Depot? Doors from Portico's industrial operation in Costa Rica are there. However, the prospects for communities entering the certified market are poor, so poor that it is naive to promote certification without major changes in the approach.

To ensure the successful participation of communities in the certified market, the Forest Management Trust proposes that communities form joint ventures with successful private-sector forest enterprises. Such ventures stand to benefit both partners. Certified joint ventures offer the private sector reliable access to raw materials while assuring communities equitable treatment in business dealings. The issue of access is significant where indigenous groups have gained control over extensive areas of forest, as has been the case in Bolivia and Canada. Competent private-sector firms have what the communities and their supporting nongovernmental organizations (NCOS) lack--the technology, capital, contacts, and business acumen to function in the market. Of course, this requires that the community's supporting expatriate and local NGOS play a markedly different role in community forest projects from the role they played in the past. The new role calls for NGOS to empower communities by training them to deal with an unaltruistic business partner. The NGO serves as a watchdog to help assure that both partners adhere to the social, economic, and environmental conditions imposed (voluntarily) by certification. This arrangement has the potential for reducing the NGO'S costs of involvement and the level of dependency created while increasing the probability that the forest operation will be sustainable and profitable--for both partners.

FSC certification has earned the opposition of those interests that are most threatened by its success in the short run. Most vociferous in their complaints about the alleged environmental bias of the FSC, the unprofitability of certified forestry, and the threat to free trade posed by voluntary certification are the American Forest & Paper Association and the International Wood Products Association. These groups rightfully fear voluntary, independent certification because it gives consumers the power to differentiate among otherwise identical products according to the forest management practices of the supplier. In the longer term, the commitment of the certification movement to the sustainability of forest management and, specifically, the requirement that harvest volume equal regeneration assures the future of the forest industry. Individual companies are starting to break ranks as they see opportunities to gain market share.

Opposition to forest management as a strategy for maintaining forest ecosystems, with certification as a core element, has arisen within the conservation community itself--a veritable circular firing squad of organizations with a common goal but with different approaches (Dickinson, Dickinson, and Putz 1996). Some groups simply oppose logging altogether; others seek bans on logging in tropical rain forests or in old-growth forests. The Sierra Club supports certification of private forestlands in the United States but vehemently opposes certification on federal lands because they are continuing advocates of legislation before Congress, which would prohibit commercial logging in national forests.

Opposing views must be heard, evaluated, and addressed as needed. Forest-industry opposition will fade as individual companies find that an expanded market justifies their becoming certified producers or value-added processors of certified products. Of paramount importance is the credibility of certified forest management within the scientific community and with conscientious decision makers, both corporate and individual. Scientific credibility requires continuing research to refine and improve the ecological basis for certifiable forest management (Putz and Viana 1996). The level of public awareness must be raised and translated into pressure to stock more products from certified, well-managed forests.

What is the future of forest management certification? Certification is only a tool. The more relevant question is: Does society, in rich and poor countries alike, find value in maintaining forest ecosystems outside parks that have a dual function of generating income while maintaining biological diversity? Increasing efforts by environmental organizations to educate the public and to pressure the forest sector to adopt certified good-management practices are needed. The recent decisions by Home Depot and IKEA to support certification are two of the most important breakthroughs, assuming that the certified production base can be expanded while maintaining the credibility of the FSC trademark. In fact, the market is already lucrative enough to have attracted its share of charlatans. Consumers must ask: Does the dealer hold FSC chain-of-custody certification? Does the product advertisement identify an FSC-accredited certifier?

You, the reader of this, are part of the answer. Your willingness to seek out and purchase certified forest products will send a signal back to the producer in Georgia or Bolivia that practicing good forest management pays.

1.The purpose of the Forest Management Trust, [http://www.foresttrust.org], is to promote sustainable management of forests for timber and nontimber products and services. Activities have been funded by private foundations, including the MacArthur Foundation and the Moriah Fund, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Forest Service.

COUNTRY                                    NUMBER

Belgium                                         3
Belize                                          1
Bolivia                                         4
Brazil                                          7
Canada                                          3
Costa Rica                                      5
Czech Republic                                  1
Germany                                         1
Honduras                                        2
Italy                                           1
Malaysia                                        1
Mexico                                          6
Netherlands                                     8
New Zealand                                     2
Panama                                          1
Paraguay                                        1
Poland                                          4
Solomon Islands                                 9
South Africa                                   10
Sri Lanka                                       3
Sweden                                         13
Switzerland                                     2
United Kingdom                                 11
United States                                  39
Zambia                                          1
Zimbabwe                                        1

Source: FSC 1999.

Hectares of FSC-Endorsed Certified Forest Sites, September 1999

Belgium                                 4342
Belize                                 95800
Bolivia                               560133
Brazil                               1329705
Canada                                211093
Costa Rica                             29035
Czech Republic                         10441
Germany                                23615
Guatemala                              32619
Honduras                               18127
Indonesia                              62278
Italy                                   1100
Malaysia                               55083
Mexico                                 94908
Namibia                                49000
Netherlands                            69064
New Zealand                            45025
Panama                                    23
Papua, N.G.                             4310
Paraguay                               16000
Poland                               2324013
Solomon Islands                        41606
South Africa                          486631
Sri Lanka                              12726
Sweden                               8875979
Switzerland                             2112
United Kingdom                         16161
United States                        1558615
Zambia                               1273700
Zimbabwe                               24850

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): FIG. 2--The Forest Stewardship Council logo.

Dickinson, M. B., J. C. Dickinson, and F. E. Putz. 1996. Natural Forest Management as a Conservation Tool in the Tropics: Divergent Views on Possibilities and Alternatives. Commonwealth Forestry Review 4 (75): 309-315.

FSC [Forest Stewardship Council]. 1996. Forest Stewardship Council Principles and Criteria for Forest Management. Oaxaca, Mexico: Forest Stewardship Council. Mimeographed.

-----. 1999. [http://www.fscoax.org].

Hayward, J. 1998. Certifying Industrial Forestry in B.C. Understory [Journal of the Certified Forest Products Council] 4 (8): 1, 6-9.

Kiker, C. F., and F. E. Putz. 1997. Ecological Certification of Forest Products: Economic Challenges. Ecological Economics 20 (1): 37-51.

Nittler, J. B., and D. W. Nash. 1999. The Certification Model for Forestry in Bolivia. Journal of Forestry 97 (3): 32-36.

OPIC [Overseas Private Investment Corporation]. 1998. Request for Comments on Draft Environmental Handbook. Federal Register, 25 February, 9696-9709.

Parker, J. K., V. E. Sturtevant, M. A. Shannon, W. R. Burch Jr., J. M. Grove, J. C. Ingersoll, and L. Sagel. 1999. Some Contributions of Social Theory to Ecosystem Management. In Ecological Stewardship: A Common Reference for Ecosystem Management, edited by N. C. Johnson, A. J. Malk, W. T. Sexton, and R. Szaro, 245-277. Oxford: Elsevier Science.

Putz, F. E., and V. Viana. 1996. Biological Challenges for Certification of Tropical Timber. Biotropica 3 (28): 323-330.

Viana, V. M., J. Ervin, R. Z. Donoran, C. Elliott, and H. Gholz, eds. 1996. Certification of Forest Products: Issues and Perspectives. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

WWF [World Wildlife Fund]. 1999. WWF's Global Forests and Trade Initiative News, Spring.

~~~~~~~~

By Joshua C. Dickinson III

Dr. Dickinson is the executive director of the Forest Management Trust, Gainesville, Florida 32608.