Participants benefit from topical side events at PEFC Stakeholder Dialogue

17 December 2013 PEFC Stakeholder Dialogue

FLEGT, plantations and engaging small forest owners in certification were some of the many topics discussed and debated by participants at the side events of PEFC’s Stakeholder Dialogue on 15 November.

The side events were designed to enable more in-depth exchange between the close to 300 participants attending the Dialogue. Under the banner of Advancing Sustainable Trade in Asia, a number of organizations took the opportunity to present their work and engage with stakeholders in side events on key forestry-related issues.

Following the European Forest Institute’s (EFI) side event on FLEGT & Certification – identifying synergies, Tom ter Horst of EFI’s EU FLEGT Facility in Asia highlighted, “we were surprised by the overwhelming interest and active discussion of participants on this topic, especially within the context Malaysia and Indonesia. Standards, auditing and verification procedures were some of the areas identified where synergies could be strengthened but clearly more explorations is needed as we only scratched the surface.”

Elsewhere in the venue, participants were exchanging experience and ideas to advance the uptake of PEFC Project Chain of Custody certification. Project certification is a mechanism whereby contractors and others involved in shorter-term projects are able to obtain Chain of Custody certification for the certified timber that they use. With a number of high profile building projects in the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy now possessing PEFC Project Chain of Custody certification, great illustrative examples to inspire and encourage others were presented.  Participants considered ways to increase exposure to these projects and agreed that Project Chain of Custody certification needs to be promoted for future Olympic venue construction.

In a session focused on agroforestry and smallholder certification, PEFC partners from throughout Asia presented ongoing collaborative projects that are working to innovate solutions for expanding forest certification. Representatives from organizations in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand discussed why they need certification, what their challenges are and how they are working to develop approaches towards certification. The session underscored the massive contribution that trees outside of forests deliver to rural economies and the industrial forest sector alike, and called for forest certification systems to do more to support the certification of trees planted within a landscape matrix.