Development of the Regional Risks Assessment Regarding FSC-controlled Wood
The third meeting of the Working Group under the project «Development of the regional risks assessment regarding FSC-controlled wood» was held on January, 29th in Silver Taiga office.
This project is being realized by Silver Taiga Foundation together with the Russian National FSC office. The main goal of the project is to develop a regional document on the basis of national risks assessment and with consideration of the Komi Republic peculiarity. The document will help the certified companies to assess the risks while purchasing the wood from noncertified suppliers.
It should be pointed out, that the term «controlled wood» was presented in 2004 to define compliance criteria of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for noncertified wood, purchased by the FSC-certified companies. There are many FSC-certified companies operating in the Republic of Komi. It is important for them to have a good risk assessment tool with regard to the wood, purchased from the noncertified suppliers. This wood should be controlled in order to exclude the illegal one or harvested with violation of traditional and civil rights of the local population, or in the area of high conservation value forests.
During these three meetings the members of the Working Group (the representatives of forest business, NGOs, local population) examined each indicator in details and defined the risk level (low or indefinite). The evaluation has been done on the basis of forestry units of the Komi Republic. To answer the disputable questions the requests were made to the relevant authorities – State Forestry Service, Biology Institute of Komi Scientific Center of Ural branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Timber and Related Industries Workers’ Union of the Komi Republic and many others. The answers were taken into consideration at risk level definition.
The given project will be updated and presented for the discussion to the interested parties. The final document will be referred to the Technical Committee of the National FSC Working Group for the purpose of the further accreditation in FSC International within the national risks assessment.
Elena Popova
Translated by Anastasia Popova