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The never-ending conflict around the Białowieża forest has escalated to the level that it may challenge the certification of all state forests in Poland. It involves an injunction issued by the European Court of Justice, eurosceptic Polish authorities ignoring the…

Accreditation Services International (ASI) has published the following information on their webpage: 

All products that are certified as being environmentally or socially responsible have to rely on a Chain of Custody system to keep track of products as they move along the supply chain. And all such systems are potentially open to fraud. Can blockchain, the much-talked about code…

NEPCon invites stakeholders to provide feedback on our revised Policy of Association. The consultation will be open until 9 January 2018.

For the past year, FSC has been pilot testing its tools for valuing the conservation and restoration of forests, which will provide FSC-certified forest managers with additional and diversified revenue for the positive impact that their activities have – for instance – on biodiversity…

FSC has made very tangible steps forward on gender through its adoption – in 2015 – of Criterion 2.2 in the new FSC Principles and Criteria (P&C V5-2 EN); which commits FSC to promoting Gender Equality in its work. Criterion 2.2 is articulated through nine indicators designed to…

In Tuesday’s FSC General Assembly programme were two sessions focusing on controlled wood (CW), including – in the morning – a session on the CW Strategy. This was organised as a ‘fish bowl’ event in which six speakers gave their personal thoughts about the future of controlled wood;…

Monday morning’s session at the FSC General Assembly Can CBs deliver independent audits? raised important issues and described risks associated with FSC auditing; for example, increased price competition leading to undesirable outcomes such as less evaluation effort, softened…

Getting certified costs money. It’s worth doing from an environmental point of view, but is it worth doing from a purely business point of view?

Another area that deserves special focus from FSC is community certification. When communities have legal ownership over their lands, deforestation is lower, and biodiversity protection and carbon storage are higher. However, in only 10% of cases are community land rights formally…

Are you a student, consultant, or entrepreneur and keen to develop a business idea around ecosystem services and products? An online training course starting this October offers you a range of support including writing your own business plan.

FSC changed its requirements on the use of risk assessments for illegally harvested wood for sourcing Controlled Wood on 30 June 2017. This article describes what has changed and why. 

Five Ukrainian organisations have lost their FSC^TM Chain of Custody certificates after FSC started using volume control for charcoal supply chains earlier this year. This outcome follows an investigation of the volume control system – undertaken with close cooperation…

Today, we're releasing the NEPCon Sourcing Hub, the biggest and most detailed collection of forest-related risk assessments that have ever been published. 

Your supplier has given you some documents that appear to show that the timber they’re selling to you was legally harvested. But how do you know if the documents are genuine or not?

Our new FSC Expert Training Programme has been endorsed as fulfilling FSC’s new, stricter requirements for auditor training. The new Training Programme consists of a five-day FSC Forest Management course and a three-day FSC Chain of Custody course, combined with online modules.…

Meeting the due diligence legality requirements of the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) can be a challenge. But there’s help at hand as we’re running some free training courses this autumn. The training is part of a project we’re running that’s funded by the LIFE Programme of the European…

On 24 August NEPCon [1] will launch the NEPCon Sourcing Hub, the biggest and most detailed collection of national commodity risk assessments that has ever been published [2]. The risk assessments focus on the potential environmental, social and economic impacts of producing and…

NEPCon is taking part in an initiative to increase the value placed on the natural world by helping people bring business ideas on ecosystem services to fruition. This article provides some information about the initiative to help get you thinking about any new business ideas you may…

Are you thinking of going to the Timber Expo at the NEC in Birmingham, UK this year? It’s on from 10-12 October. If so, look out for us!