FSC Principles & Criteria review: for better or for worse?
The fundamental principles for good forest management, the global Principles & Criteria (P&C) were heavily debated among FSC’s members over the weekend. A key issue of concern was whether they resulted in reduced access for smallholders and the forests of the South.
FSC is conducting its first consistent review of its ”constitution” - the Principles and Criteria for good forest management - since their adoption almost 15 years ago. The P&C workshop at the FSC General Assembly was met with great interest among the FSC members; the two-day event attracted 150 participants, almost three times the expected number.
Reduced access for smallholders?
During the review process, the number of criteria has grown from 56 to 71.”This may not sound like a big deal, but you can add another 15 pages to the already complex national forest standards on that account”, says Richard Donovan, Senior Vice President of the Rainforest Alliance. “This tends to make forest certification less accessible for small operations”.
Major efforts have been made to ensure clarity and precision of language; however the price for this is reduced flexibility for the development of indicators that are adapted to smallholders and communities. The P&C review has received heavy criticism that it is not applicable to all forest types and scales, despite the membership identifying this as a specific goal at the last general assembly in 2008 (motion 10).
“The latest version of the P&C has become very complex and less applicable to small forest owners and local communities, to the point that they won’t be able to comply with all of the criteria”, explains Mauricio Voivodic, Executive Director of IMAFLORA. “I don’t see how the decision from 2008 has been taken into consideration during this process,” said Mr. Voivodic. “I would like to see the P&C less complicated, easier to understand and more applicable. This is a must”.
Demand for field test of revised P&C
The intention was to use the stakeholder input from the meetings for finalising the P&C, and to go to a final voting by November 1st. But an influential delegate from Latin America, with the ability to block the process, objected to the launch of the new P&C without prior field testing over a spectrum of operation sizes and categories. Field testing would require FSC to first develop a global set of indicators. This was required by the FSC membership in 2008 but has been put on hold due to the P&C development process.
