Second National Workshop in Montenegro to develop its National Forest Management FSC Standards
As part of the on-going process to develop Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) forest management standards for Montenegro, a second national workshop will be held on the 25th of January 2006, in Podgorica (Montenegro).
The main objective of this workshop is to present the second draft of the FSC Standards, with the aim of motivating all forestry stakeholders to participate in the process. Moreover, this workshop aims to inform the national and international timber products sector that Montenegro is moving towardscredible verification of forestry practices via the FSC process.
The workshop will be presented by Richard Donovan, the Rainforest Alliance’s chief of forestry, and will promote the participation of a wide range of stakeholders, including the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Waters and other state bodies, the Montenegro Wood Council, Montenegrin NGO’s such as The Greens of Montenegro and the WWF project office, Montenegrin forestry companies andinternational funding bodies (USAID, GTZ, UNDP).
This workshop is included in the FODEMO (“Forestry Development in Montenegro”) project of Lux Development. The FSC initiative,started in August 2004,was designed to assist the development and revitalization in the forestry sector in Montenegro. Within this context, the Rainforest Alliance was selected to guide and ensure the creation of a working group to formulate the Montenegrin forest management standards, to be endorsed by the FSC. The Rainforest Alliance has previous experience in initiating and orientating the complex process of designing FSC standards in Bolivia, Russia and Portugal and, of course, it has participated in the majority of the national FSC standard initiatives todate.
The national FSC standards are being written by a national working group which, as the FSC requires, “reflects the consensus of a broad range of stakeholder groups” and is formed by three chambers: economic (Milos Markovic, Nuhodzic Mensura, Vukic Novovic), social (Ljiljana Vladicic, Goran Popovic, Momo Jokic) and environmental (Danka Petrovic, Aleksandar Drljevic, Dragan Roganovic).
Through this article, we invite and encourage all interested parties to actively participate in this process by attending to this workshop or by sending your comments on the drafts to the e-mail address given below.
The 2nd draft can be viewed at:
Contact: To attend the national workshop or send your comments, please contact Jamie Lawrence, Forestry Division Western Europe Director, Rainforest Alliance: