Editorial: "Isofication" of FSC - are we hitting the ground?

In 2004, a new FSC accreditation standard was introduced in order to bring FSC’s certification system in accordance with ISO’s international standards for certification.

Now after 6 years there is clear evidence that this ISO-fixation is undermining the integrity of the FSC system, by shifting the focus away from improving field performance to evaluating systems. Stakeholders, however are not interested in systems, but verification that good forest management is happening and that claims are really trustworthy.

The research presented by Forest of the World at the side meeting yesterday highlights the problem: only a few percent of the non-conformances identified by Accreditation Services International (ASI) – the organisation that oversees the certification bodies’ work – were related to field performance.

Crucial issues are the hardest to assess

ASI operates under the ISO system and will therefore treat any rules in the standards as equally important, regardless of their potential impact.

This approach might be justified if all requirements were in fact equally important and were equally easy to evaluate on. But that is far from the case! It is much easier for an ASI auditor to discover that a document lacks a signature or has a wrong date than it is to evaluate whether High Conservation Value Forests (HCVF) are managed in the right way, if harvesting levels are sustainable, or if controlled wood field verification adequately excludes controversial sources from entering into FSC-labeled products. The issues that are absolutely crucial for the credibility of FSC are precisely those that are most difficult to assess.

ASI’s focus trickles down through the system

ASI’s approach forces the certification bodies (CBs) to focus huge time and energy addressing trivial conformance issues instead of ones central to the FSC mission. For each non-conformance issued to a CB by ASI, the CB is required to perform a root cause analysis, define and implement corrective actions, and document compliance.

It is hardly possible for CBs to manage hundreds of certificates without any kind of small mistake occurring from time to time. The result of the ISO approach is that CB auditors need to spend more time on checking, double checking and triple checking documents to ensure that nothing is forgotten, instead of focusing on verifying management performance in the forest.

The approach thus forces the CBs to focus on the same trivial issues when they carry out client auditing. And what’s worse, they are forced to force their certified customers to do the same.

A record documenting the fact that a training occurred becomes more important than ensuring that the staff understand their obligations; a date on the risk assessment becomes more important than the content of the risk assessment; a map of HCVF becomes more important than the management of the HCVF; a list of group members in the FSC database becomes more important than whether the group is certifiable.

FSC faces several great challenges, but none of them are as pervasive as the “isofication” problem. Although this has gone largely unnoticed, the ISO approach may pose the greatest threat of all to the FSC system.

During the last FSC two General Assemblies members approved motions requiring FSC to focus on what is going on in the forest rather than on system performance issues. The current accreditation system approach is taking us in the opposite direction. It is time for FSC to take the members’ request seriously.

Peter Feilberg, CEO of NEPCon