Plenary Session on Forest Management Certification: Shaping our roots
As FSC celebrates 30 years of advancing responsible forest management, this plenary brings together reflection, urgency, and a collective call to action. Through keynotes, a vision-setting presentation, and a dynamic panel discussion, participants will revisit FSC’s history of credibility and innovation, examine the challenges facing today’s standards, and explore pathways to a climate-responsive, user and impact centered future.
The session includes reflections on FSC’s achievements and the evolution of its Principles & Criteria, making the case for change, and a panel of diverse voices from across the FSC community. We will explore: How can we balance stability with transformation? What would outcome-oriented standards look like in practice? How do we embed climate action, clarity, and usability into the next chapter of FSC?
Kevin Jones
Kevin serves as PSC Economic North representative. Having qualified with a BSc Hons Degree in Ecological Science (Edinburgh University) and MSc Forestry (Oxford University) he went on to qualify as a Chartered Forester with the UK Institute of Chartered Foresters. He then worked as a forest manager in a variety of contexts including community forestry in Africa, management of historic landscapes, nature conservation forests, and commercial forest management. He carried out his first FSC forest audit in 1995 for FSC accredited certification body Soil Association Certification Ltd and eventually became the Director of their global forest certification programme before retiring from that role in 2022. Kevin has carried out forest and chain of custody audits in over 60 countries from all regions in the world, written forest management standards and quality management systems to comply with FSC and ISO accreditation requirements, and actively contributed to FSC policy development.
Maureen Kamau
Maureen is a first-year doctoral student at the University of Eastern Finland with a background in forestry and hands-on experience in natural resources management. Her master's thesis analysed climate adaptation strategies in boreal forest management based on FSC standards. Building on this, her PhD studies examine climate resilience in community-managed forests in the Global South and assess the impact of certification on carbon stocks. Maureen advances inclusive, science-informed approaches to forest policy and governance.
Rod Taylor
Rod is the Global Director of Forests and Nature Conservation at the World Resource Institute (WRI), with oversight of Global Forest Watch, Nature Resources Governance and Policy and work on responsible supply chains. Before joining WRI, Rod worked as the Forests Director at WWF International, and before that led WWF’s forest work in the Asia Pacific region. Earlier in his career, Rod worked as a forest policy adviser in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Rod began his career as a lawyer in Australia and has a Masters Degree in Environmental Law from the Australian National University.
Glenda Amarilis Lee Pinto
Twenty three years of experience as an Engineer in Natural Renewable Resources, graduated from the Agronomy Faculty from the San Carlos de Guatemala University, Guatemala. Glenda, has a specialization in forest certification and carbon markets. Glenda has expertise as an advisor to several companies in Guatemala to ensure compliance with the requirements of principles, criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management standards, FSC®, both at small and large producers level in rubber forests, as well as forest management and timber and paper industry.
Event Details
- Monday, 27 October
Time: 14:30 - 16:00 (EST - Panama) / 20:30 - 22:00 (CET) / 03:30 - 05:00 (WITA)