New FSC Certification Initiatives
May 15-17, Silver Taiga Foundation’s director Yury Pautov participated in the working meeting of European and “Boreal” members of the Forest Stewardship Council considering draft motions of FSC General Assembly, which is a global forum of the international voluntary certification system expected to be held in October 2017 in Vancouver (Canada).
The meeting was arranged near Helsinki (Finland). It was attended by members of the FSC Board of Directors, international secretariat, regional and national offices, as well as international FSC members from Europe, Canada and Russia.
Participants of a working meeting of European and boreal members of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) is an international organization aiming at establishing economically sustainable, environmentally justified and socially responsible forest management in the whole world. FSC’s supreme governing body is its General Assembly convened once every 3 years. The General Assembly is a forum of around one thousand international FSC members, experts and numerous stakeholders. It considers the issues related to the system management, development, influence on the global forest goods market and changing forest management practices in the world. The General Assembly takes decisions which are later implemented by FSC Directorate, regional and national offices, including FSC Russia.
In February 2017 the Silver Taiga Foundation became an international FSC member and started actively participating in preparation for the FSC General Assembly. Draft motions of the GA have to pass through a fairly complicated procedure of their submission, agreement, and editing, before there are finally presented to all FSC members for voting. Lobbying of the motions relevant for a particular region depends on how many advocates this or that proposal gets. The voting process at the GA is arranged in sectoral chambers (social, economic, environmental ones). If any of the chambers disagrees with a motion, it may block it completely.
In March and April 2017 FSC Russia’s international members prepared 6 draft motions, with two of them submitted by the Silver Taiga Foundation. Draft motion 25 is called “Ensuring availability of digital borders of certified forest areas and high conservation value forest borders for FSC certificate holders”. The motion is aimed at higher transparency of FSC certificate holders’ operation and introduction of new cutting-edge planning and monitoring techniques enabling certified forest management based on Earth Remote Sensing (ERS) data and GIS technologies.
The Silver Taiga Foundation has been working successfully with ERS data for a long time, and WWF Russia jointly with the Russian national FSC office operate the website /www.hcvf.ru/ where you can see borders of certified forest areas and intact forest landscapes referred to High Conservation Value Forests (HCVF) now already. The draft motion presented by the Silver Taiga Foundation implies that each FSC forest management certificate holder is to prepare and upload mapping data with GIS layers where forest plots operated by companies with HCVF borders allotted are marked to the Internet. The idea was offered at the meeting in Finland and supported by the participants. The questions mostly referred to how it will be implemented by “minor” FSC certificate holders with managed forest area not exceeding some dozens or hundreds of hectares that abound in Europe.
The following draft motion 36 presented by the Silver Taiga Foundation to be reviewed by FSC international members requires some clarifications of wording in Motion 65 adopted by the previous 2014 FSC Assembly with regard to the need to protect intact forest landscapes (IFL).
“Motion 65 aims to protect the vast majorities of intact forest landscapes, however it fails to explain what “vast majorities” means. It can be interpreted as the major part of IFL within FSC certified area or the major part of the whole intact massif where both certified and non-certified companies may operate. Therefore, it is proposed to specify the term, define what the most valuable part of IFL is and how to protect it based on the consensus of FSC certificate holders and other IFL users irrespective of whether it is fully or partially included in the certified area. The motion is mostly relevant for boreal forest countries, like Russia and Canada, and for African and South American tropical countries with IFLs. For most FSC certificate holders from Europe or Asia, it will not affect forest management practices. That is why it is proposed to define the most valuable areas to preserve IFLs on the national level as part of development and approval of National FSC Standards”, Mr. Pautov explained.
Over 20 draft Motions for the upcoming FSC General Assembly from European and Boreal members were discussed at the meeting in Helsinki. Now, they are uploaded to the General Assembly website www.ga2017.fsc.org for review, comments and preliminary discussion.
In addition, the participants of the meeting visited a couple of forest plots of the well-known Finnish company UPM Kymmene where they could observe the practices of their forest management certified in line with the Finnish National FSC Standard.
Discussion in groups
The tour to the UPM Kymmene’s forest
Certified Finnish logging plot with key elements and biotopes
