Through Discussions to Mutual Understanding

A field calibration seminar with participation of the certification bodies was organized at the initiative of the FSC Russian National Office on August 19-21 in the Komi Republic on the base of the Syktyvdinskoye and Priluzskoye forestry units. The target of the seminar was to reach a common understanding and interpretation of the national FSC standard requirements.

The problem is that the requirements, indicators, and benchmarks of the standard related to the conservation of the ecological properties of the forest, biodiversity, and sustainability of the forest use on the certified territories are quite broadly reflected in the standard, but, in the same way, they are broadly and ambiguously interpreted by the audit companies during the checking of the certified companies. Many of these requirements are checked formally, without considering the changes in the forest use practice directly in the forest, on specific logging sites. This arouses criticism by different interested parties – non-governmental organizations, local residents, forestry units…

Along with the FSC Russian Office, the Silver Taiga Foundation and ASI (ASI is an international accreditation body for sustainability standards systems. It assesses the organizations, which issue the certificates, while ensuring the competence of the checks and considering the interests of all stakeholders) have taken part in the organization of the seminar in Komi.

During the preparation, the “Silver Taiga” employees and ASI national representative in Russia Dmitry Kutepov had specially selected the fresh felling sites in the Priluzskoye and Syktyvdinskoye forestry units, where the quality of the fulfillment of the Russian standard indicators could be evaluated through the specific examples. During the event, these logging sites were assessed by all seminar participants and the auditor of each certification body could express his/her opinion regarding the indicator fulfillment or nonfulfillment. After such field verifications, the discussions between the standard developers, representatives of the FSC National Office, and auditors conducted both directly on the logging sites and in the auditorium were extensive and led to a unified interpretation of the standard requirements by all participants.

The field seminar has been attended by the representatives of four certification bodies – Rainforest Alliance (represented by NEPCon), Bureau Veritas, LLC “Forest Certification”, and “Russian Register”, members of the Coordination Council, Technical Committee of the National Working group, employees of the FSC Russian National Office, and ASI representatives.

The seminar participants have also visited some objects of the Komi Model Forest demonstration routes.

For more detailed information and feedback on the seminar, please, refer to the site of the FSC Russian National Office “On the way towards a common standard understanding”.