The Impact Assessment Of Forest Certification On Sustainable Forest Management

Forest Certification is emerged in the 1990s as a market tool to promote sustainable forest management (SFM). After more than 20 years'rapid development in the world, forest certification has been recognized and supported by wide stakeholders, and it has been a trend of forestry development in the world. In China, forest certification has been got the great attention from the government, and has been taken as an useful tool to promote forestry sustainable development. The State Forest Administration is developing China national forest certification scheme, and more and more forest companies are seeking FSC certification based on the international market demand.Forest certification is widely regarded as one of the most important initiatives to promote responsible forest management that include social, environmental, economic, cultural and spiritual values. The question is: can forest certification effectively promote all of these values? Has it achieved its goals? What issues and challenges are still exiting to have an impact on its effective? It's time to measure the impact of forest certification in the world and China.This thesis summarized the mechanism and drivers of forest certification, and its status and trends in the world and China, and synthetically analyzed the concept, way, scope, factor and field of the impact of forest certification on SFM, and select FSC as a case study. Through a comprehensive evaluation method that include literature and auditing report review, questionnaires to wide stakeholders, key stakeholders'interview, field survey and case study of certified forest companies, this thesis conducted the research on the drivers of forest companies, on-ground impact assessment of forest certification on SFM, macro impact on forest policy and socio-politics, and the problems and challenges of forest certification in China. Here are some key conclusions of the paper:The development of certified products market and the policy support of key stakeholders have played an important role in the development of forest certification;Forest Certification, especially for FSC certification, has brought active impact on forest management on ground and forest policy on the macro level. The forest certification is indeed a catalyst for often substantial changes to diverse aspects of forest management approaches, rather than a means of rewarding operations that were already conducting excellent forestry before certification;The effective of forest certification is different and affected by different factors, such as forest certification scheme and relevant standards, the auditing quality and credibility of certification body, the equality between different key stakeholders and countries, cost efficient, the extent of certified forest products market's development, the roles of the government and the laws and regulation framework in the country etc.;Forest certification also has brought the on ground active impact on the SFM in China. Forest management has been changed and improved a lot through the certification process. On the forest management aspect, the forest certification improved the awareness and capacity of forest companies on SFM, improve the forest management system and practice etc.; on the social aspect, the forest certification has contributed to respect the traditional and legal rights of local communities, improve the relationship between the certified company and local communities, and also protect the rights and benefits of employees and workers etc.; on the environmental aspect, forest certification has contributed to decrease the negative environmental effect of forest operations through environmental impact assessment, protect the soil and water resource, maintain and improve the bio-diversity and high value conservation forest, strengthen the administrative of the chemical use, the waste disposal, exotic species introduction, the genetically modified organism (GMO) application and forest conversion etc.; on the economic aspect, forest certification has brought some market benefits to the certified companies through the price premium, maintain wood market and increase the company's image etc.;Forest certification also has brought a certain impact to forest policy and social politics on the macro-level in China, including promoting national scheme's development, improving the awareness and capacity on SFM on the macro-level, incorporating the forest certification standards requirements in some forest standards and policy developing; promoting the discussion and involvement of different stakeholders in the forest policy etc.;There are still some different opinion and understanding of the impact of forest certification on SFM. Based on the survey in China, the forest managers think forest certification has more important impact on SFM than other stakeholders and have done big improvement to achiever forest certification. And some of the interviewees still think there are no indeed changes or impact of forest certification in China, and it's just a business way that the forest managers and manufactures have to follow to ensure the international market access. And different understanding of the concept of SFM itself also bring confusion about the forest management and forest certification in practice; andThere are still many issues and challenges existing which affect the effect and development of forest certification in China, including the lack of the incentive of forest certification with no support from the government policy, insufficient demand of market on the certified products, low cost-efficient; insufficient capacity of forest managers, certification bodies, consulting companies and also the certification administrative bodies; the credibility of forest certification; multi-certification schemes and difference of certification standards; the conflicts among forest certification standards and relevant forest policy and standards etc..Finally, based on the study, the paper puts forward the policy suggestions to promote the further development of forest certification and improve its effectiveness in China:Strengthen the dissemination and raise the awareness of forest certification in China,Develop the green public procurement policy and other incentive policies by the government,Fasten the development of national forest certification scheme,Provide the research and technique support,Develop domestic certified products market,Build the capacity on forest certification for key stakeholders,Strengthen the supervision and administrative of forest certification by the relevant adminstrative organization, andDevelop or further revise the forest certification standards and relevant forestry technique standards.