Increased Requirements for Certification Quality

The meeting of Coordination Council for forest certification national working group was held in Moscow on October 28-29, 2010. Yury Pautov, forest policy coordinator and deputy director of Silver Taiga Foundation, a member of the Coordination Council participated in this meeting.

The meeting was devoted to the current situation of certification development in different regions of Russia. It was mentioned that after implementing a new Russian certification standard the requirements for certification quality have increased. As a result the functioning of the certificates of some forest companies and even big ones has stopped for a while because of not meeting the certification requirements. Though the Komi Republic is more or less successful in this issue there are also some problems with certification quality and fulfilling the certification standards.

The special attention was paid to conservation of high conservation value forests (HCVF), a role of certification in it, compliance with the ecological requirements and providing of forest use inexhaustibility by lease holders during logging. Besides it was mentioned that in connection with the implementation of legislative order by the Council of Ministers of European Union aimed to prevention of export of illegal wood and products made out of it the role of certification will considerably increase for companies which export wood products.