A technical comment by FSC on the Statistical Annex to the UN Secretary General 2017 SDG report[1]

John Hontelez

FSC welcomes the UN acceptance of forest certification as one of the five indicators to measure sustainable forest management, which is part of the Sustainable Development Goal 15, on “life on land”. Certification is currently the most precise tool to both promote and measure sustainable forest management, as it is applied at the level of the forest management unit, whose performance is audited by independent specialized certification bodies, at least, annually.

The summary the 2017 Report shows on forest certification isbased on national reporting to FAO, and the trend it shows is about a period before the SDGs were adopted (September 2015). The report combines certification on the basis of the Forest Stewardship Standards (FSC) combined with certification based on the national members of PEFC, the other global forest certification organisation. It does not yet take into account double certification, as governments are not doing such calculations. Recently, FSC and PEFC announced it will, from now on, report itself on double certification, and it has national and global figures for 2012 and 2016.

Based on that, one could assume that the UN figure of 285 million ha in 2010 should be corrected downwards to some 250 million, and that for 2014 to 385 million. For end 2016 the corrected figures is 429 million ha. Of this 45% is FSC certified.

FSC is convinced that the UN recognition of forest certification as a tool to implement the SDGs will give a further boost to the use of certification. Not only because governments may decide to encourage, support forest certification as part of their national SDG strategies, but also because it is a clear signal to the forest industry, retailers, public procurers and individual consumers to choose for certified forest related products.

The UN SG report summarizes trends on forest certification in regions and specific groups of countries. Between 2010 and 2014, three of these regionsshow a decrease. In all these regions this is in fact reflecting developments of FSC certification, as PEFC is not active in those countries.

  1. Sub-Saharan Africa: in that period FSC certification decreased by 0,8 million ha. While certification increased in several countries, it went down in South Africa and the Republic of Congo. In South Africa this is due to the reduced plantation area which is being used for paper production. Part of these plantations were, as part of government policy, converted into conservation forests, which usually does not use certification as guidance for its protection. In Republic of Congo the reduction was temporary, a result of measures FSC takes when there is evidence of poor performance of FSC certified companies. At the end of 2016, the FSC certified forest area in Republic of Congo was again above the level of 2010.
  2. Landlocked Developing Countries: the reduction is predominantly due to a considerable decrease of FSC certification in Bolivia. According to researchers, on the basis of a survey amongst stakeholders, this decline has been due to “legal insecurities, a lack of governmental support, and market forces that provide disincentives for certification”[2]. Since 2014, the FSC certified forest area is increasing again by10%, but it is not yet at the level of 2010.
  3. Small Island Developing States: the reduction here is mainly due to the loss of one, rather large, FSC certificate in Guyana, a country which in fact is not an island, but in UN terms is included in this category. Nonetheless, since the statistics were drawn, this certificate has been re-established.

[1]

[2]Espinoza & Dockry, 2014 “Forest Certification in Bolivia: A Status Report and Analysis of Stakeholder Perspectives”.