Forest Certification In Collectively Owned Forest Areas And Sustainable Forest Management

Based on a review of forest certification development at home and abroad, this paper takes as an example the case of forest certification conducted by Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in the collectively owned forest managed by Longquan Nengfu Cooperative and studies the problems encountered in collectively owned forest certification either in Longquan of Zhejiang or in the collectively owned forest areas of the southern part of China, which includes problems regarding separation of forestland ownership and management right, identification and conservation of high conservation value forest (HCVF), and plantation certification. It is concluded that it is feasible to conduct forest certification in the form of a cooperative composed of "company+farmer households" in the collectively owned forest areas of the southern part, which is favorable to the development and implementation of a forest management plan, and access of farmer households’wood products into an international market; that when international forest certification is conducted, it would be important to identify the concept of plantation in order to conduct forest certification correctly; that during the forest certification it is important to correctly identify high conservation values, based on which measures and a monitoring programs for conservation of HCVFs could be developed; and that it is important to cooperate with local government agencies during forest certification to get their support in order to get through forest certification smoothly.