Plant nurseries Advice Note
FSC has sent out a new draft advice note clarifying when tree nurseries are to be included in the scope of the FSC certificate held by an operation.
Basically, FSC proposes to request this in two different situations:
1. When the nursery is an integral part of a certified forest area.
2. When the nursery is off-site, but supplying seedlings to certified areas managed by the nursery owner.
In these cases, the draft advice note requests the nursery to be covered by the FSC standards and to comply with relevant requirements, such as those related to worker health and safety and the use of pesticides.
Stakeholder concerns
While the inclusion of on-site (typically smaller and extensively managed) nurseries in the certificate is already the standard approach, the requirement to also include off-site (typically larger) nurseries raises some concerns among stakeholders.
First of all, some of the requirements included in national FSC standards do not seem relevant in the case of nurseries. For example, a number of national FSC standards require retention of biodiversity trees and dead wood in the stand.
Competitive disadvantage
Secondly, managers of certified off-site nurseries may find themselves in a disadvantageous position on the marketplace when they are not allowed to use the same chemicals as their competitors are using. Tree nurseries are often using highly hazardous pesticides prohibited by FSC in forest management.
According to the draft advice note, it is still possible for certified operations to buy seedlings from non-certified nurseries, so the development of a niche market for FSC-certified seedlings is not encouraged very much. And off-site nurseries owned by certified operations are often selling seedlings to non-certified operations, which are less likely to prefer plants from certified nurseries.
FSC recognizes that ideally, all trees planted in FSC-certified forests should come from nurseries that comply with the relevant FSC forest management standards. However, this is not feasible at present as a separate standard would be required to cover sourcing of plants from independent nurseries.
FSC stresses that the use of seedlings dipped in pesticides prior to planting out is covered by the FSC Pesticides Policy, regardless of the origin of the plants.
Inputs invited
Based on response received so far, FSC has decided to re-open and widen the consultation on this advice note. Comments are invited until the 4th of September and should be sent to Head of the FSC Policy and Standards Unit Hans-Joachim Droste at hj.droste@fsc.org.
