PEFC calls on FSC to focus on sustainable forest management

16 May 2012 News

"We are surprised by FSC’s renewed attempt to undermine the credibility of PEFC, a move that is not in the interest of our common goal of promoting sustainable forest management," said Ben Gunneberg, Secretary General of PEFC International, in response to a report published on the FSC website.

“Now is not the time for partisan bickering about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.  As we approach Rio+20 we should be working together to fulfil the promise of forest certification, especially in tropical countries where less than one percent of the forests are certified.”

The report, which was funded by the FSC International Center, repeats findings of an earlier report published by FSC in 2009, namely that “PEFC certified products do not qualify as FSC Controlled Wood.”

“I had hoped that by this point in our development and maturation that these silly school yard games would have ceased and we could work together to promote sustainable forest management in those difficult and challenging places around the world,” added William Street, Chair of PEFC Council.  “It is our intent to continue to focus on making certification a tool to address the twin problems of deforestation and poverty in the developing world, not argue about minutia based on misunderstanding and miscommunication.” Mr. Street encouraged all stakeholders to sign the Rio Forest Certification Declaration, which is based on the idea that a common set of principles is needed, a set of principles that provides guidance to all of us about what is needed to better promote and expand forest certification.

“While we do understand that Controlled Wood is a major issue for FSC, we believe that FSC  is simply trying to divert attention away from the shortcomings of their own system and would be better served by improving its own standards and procedures”, Mr. Gunneberg emphasized.

FSC’s Controlled Wood requirements have been criticized by stakeholders for a number of years, with Greenpeace finding that “FSC Controlled Wood system is currently not strong enough to effectively eliminate controversial sources”. As recently as 2011, “[t]he FSC membership […] identified a range of serious deficiencies in guaranteeing that controlled wood is controlled”.

FSC certified material might be in violation with FSC’s own Controlled Wood standard, with FSC allowing for conversions of 10% of the forest area in countries such as the Netherlands and 20% in Papua New Guinea.

Furthermore, FSC demands only 50% of the material in FSC labelled products to originate from certified forests, while PEFC demands 70%. In other words: The risk associated with uncertified material is much lower for PEFC than compared to FSC. PEFC is committed to reducing this risk even further, investigating options to move to 100%, thus completely eliminate the use of uncertified material.

“Controlled Wood is not meant to – and cannot – deliver sustainability. It is designed to allow for the labelling of certified products in the absence of 100% certified content,” Mr. Gunneberg explained. “It is very different from sustainable forest management, and the two elements cannot be compared.”

“There are certainly differences between PEFC and FSC, but we have got to keep in mind that after 20 years of forest certification, only 8% of the world’s forests are certified. Accepting FSC as PEFC-non-controversial material is the pragmatic approach PEFC took to better enable companies to produce certified labelled products, thereby increasing demand for such certification, which in turn allows us to both promote and expand sustainable forest management practices worldwide  – and this is in the end the objective of all our work,” Mr. Gunneberg pointed out.

PEFC as the world’s largest forest certification system offers the widest supply of certified material and invites FSC-certified companies to continue to obtain PEFC Chain of Custody certification.