PEFC’s 2015 Collaboration Fund set to have a global impact

22 June 2015 Collaboration Fund

“It’s the first year in the Collaboration Fund’s five year history that we’ve had such well-developed proposals full of ambitious and innovative ideas come in from all around the world,” said Sarah Price, Head of Projects and Development at PEFC International, following the announcement of the winning projects at a PEFC members event in London.

“It is with great pleasure that we announce our 2015 support to projects in Portugal, Guiana Shield & Amazon, Indonesia and Ghana. Collectively the projects will support smallholder accessibility to PEFC certification, expand our global representation and deepen scientific understanding of carbon stocks in managed tropical forests,” Ms. Price concluded. 

The Projects

Supporting small- and community forest owners achieve certification has been a key goal of the Collaboration Fund since its conception in 2011. With two projects from different sides of the world, but both with small-forest owners at their core, chosen as grantees, this year is no different. In Europe, the Fund is helping Forestis, the Portuguese Forest Association, make certification more accessible to the many thousands of small-forest owners in the country. While in Indonesia, the Fund is supporting IFCC develop a community forest certification standard which will lay the way for local forest communities to achieve certification of their forests.

Following in the footsteps of previous projects in Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, this year we are supporting Ghana as the country moves towards a national forest certification system. While a Ghanaian national standard for sustainable forest management is already in place, the Fund will help the stakeholders to adapt the work they have done so far in order to move towards a national forest certification system ready for PEFC endorsement.

Making a change from the Fund’s more traditional projects, this year PEFC is also supporting a CIRAD led project to generate new knowledge on the long-term impacts of timber extraction on both carbon stocks and timber recovery in the humid tropics, with a particular focus on the Guiana Shield.

The Fund

The PEFC Collaboration Fund was developed to encourage locally relevant advancements in the sustainable management of forests and foster collaboration and dialogue amongst different actors. It is part of PEFC’s work to stimulate the uptake of sustainable forest management, innovate new approaches for forest certification and promote certified products in the marketplace.

This year PEFC awarded a total of 90,000 CHF to the four projects, and leveraged a further 60,000 CHF from co-funding. Since its conception in 2011, the Fund has awarded over 520,000 Swiss Francs to 24 projects with impacts realized in forests and communities all over the world.