Protecting Consumers, Protecting Forests

In this day and age of dwindling forests and shrinking habitat for wildlife, the FSC certification process is key to a healthy future for forests. Not all countries have environmental laws that monitor how timber companies extract natural resources, so the FSC standard can act as an ad hoc method for verifying sustainable timber practices worldwide and a standard that helps remedy regulatory inadequacies in this country.

SFI Does Not Equal FSC

In addition, other organizations, such as the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), have surfaced claiming that they certify companies for implementing proper forestry management practices. However, many SFI certified companies log old growth and endangered forests, replace natural forests with ecologically barren pine plantations, and use clear cutting, toxic herbicide spraying, and other logging practices that are detrimental to the environment.  Because the SFI label is basically meaningless, it is vital for the FSC standard to be adopted holistically in order for an overarching measure of sustainability to be established and to ensure consumer protection when purchasing forest products.

The Origins of Certification

In 1990, a group of timber users and traders, and representatives from environmental advocacy organizations met in California to address the necessity of a credible system for identifying well-managed forests as acceptable sources of forest products. The group determined that any such system would require global consensus. Through this discussion the humble beginnings of the Forest Stewardship Council were forged. However, it would take three more years before the group’s goals came to fruition with the founding assembly meeting in Toronto in 1993. The headquarters of the newly founded FSC were stationed in Oaxaca, Mexico with a staff of three.  By 1998, the FSC had certified over 10 million hectares of forest land in twenty-six nations and by 2003 the burgeoning organization relocated to the FSC International Center in Bonn, Germany with a staff of twenty-five.  This remarkable growth is a testament to the “greenward” shift that the general populous has undergone.  Undoubtedly, FSC initiatives will continue to progress as this ideological shift intensifies.