From small and medium-sized enterprises to global brands, more and more companies along the timber value chain are looking to demonstrate that the forest-based materials they are using come from legal and sustainable sources. Regardless of the motivation, the preferred tool for companies to demonstrate legal and sustainable sourcing of forest products is PEFC Chain of Custody certification.

Through delivering forest certification over the last 15 years, PEFC has positively impacted significant areas of forest through requiring improved forestry practices and bringing attention to sustainable management. What’s less acknowledged is our impact outside of forests. These impacts may be less obvious and beyond the traditional scope of forest certification, but they are exciting and hold much promise for scaling up.

2016 was a special year for the PEFC alliance as more countries joined the family than in any year since the early days of our organization. And thanks to the great work of the entire alliance, this was the year we reached 300 million hectares of PEFC-certified forest!

By the end of 2016, over 301 million hectares of forest area was PEFC certified, and more than 10,900 PEFC Chain of Custody certificates had been issued.

From the building momentum in Asia to the start of our standards revision process, 2016 was another busy year for the PEFC alliance – as you will see, we managed to fit a lot in! Especially for PEFC Forest Certification Week 2016 in Bali, Indonesia, we celebrated some of our achievements from this year with the special PEFC Week newsletter.