International Forest Certification Systems And Pilot Study On Developing China'Own Forest Certification System

As one of the effective ways to promote sustainable forest management, forest certification has been accepted by more and more countries, and has obtained fast development in the world. This paper introduces the concepts, elements, procedures, cost, benefit and the influences of forest certification. Based on the collection of certification information abroad, the author carried out the comparison study of the several forest certification schemes (FSC, ISO, PEFC, SFI, CSA, LEI, MTCC and UKWAS); To learn more about the impacts of certification, the author conducted the study that all forest management organizations in North America that had been certified by FSC in 2002 were surveyed to determine their views on the goals, benefits, costs, and overall impacts of certification. Furthermore, the author takes the Changhua Forest Farm, Linan City, Zhejiang Procince, R.R.China as the case of the paper and analyses the impacts of certification. The results indicate that forest certification can promote environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the local forests. At the end of the paper, the author introduces the development of forest certification in China, analyzes the problems and obstacle of promoting forest certification in China, puts forward the model of developing China's forest certification system, and points out the modes should include the standard setting, institutional arrangement and accreditation system, etc.