By Morten Brodde, FSC Denmark
At a side meeting on standard innovations two concrete examples of streamlined solutions tailor made for small-scale forests were presented.
The first example from Asia-Pacific where FSC has developed an Asia Pacific Regional Forest Stewardship Standard for smallholders in India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. The aim is to enable more smallholders to join the FSC system in the region, where they make up a huge part of forest management and a big part of the wood supply in the region.
The development of the regional standard was done following the typical national standard development process with a chamber balanced Standard Development Group. But the result was not typical. The standard, that is applicable for individual forest units less than 20 ha, has been written in a simpler language and provides realistic and achievable indicators relevant to the circumstances of smallholders and risks in the region.
Keith Moore, individual FSC member and consultant on the development of the standard, explained it in this way:
“It had to be simple and relevant and usable to the people that basically manage on average a forest of 3 ha, typically are poor and with very low educational level. The project was about adapting the existing normative framework. We still have 10 principles and 70 criteria in the regional standard.”
Keith More underlined that they managed to develop indicators that were highly adapted to the specific region covered by the standard and at the same time in line with the FSC normative framework.
Going further in the US
Another example of tailor-made streamlined certification solutions for smallholders is from the United States. In 2019 the Smallholder Access Program (SAP) pilot, approved by FSC, was initiated to evaluate an outcome-oriented certification concept in South and Central Appalachia for very small management units. The concept was based on a 31-indicator streamlined standard, based on potential risk to social and environmental values. Normally, there would be 125 indicators to fulfill.
Two of the objectives of the pilot were to assess if the concept could achieve the same outcomes as regular certification and be feasible and cost-effective for certificate holders.
Monday morning, Kara Wires, Technical Manager, Preferred by Nature, explained the conclusions from the auditing organization’s perspective.
“We did 9 audits, and we ended up with 9 non-conformances. Looking at the non-conformances they were very similar to the non-conformances that we see in other certificates in the region with similar size properties. The risk-based approach and the risk assessment that was done for the specific area addressed all the important aspects and allowed us to dig into what we think were the most important aspects to focus on during the audits. It allowed us to be efficient and effective in our audits and addressed the core requirements of FSC. It felt like a real FSC-audit”.
Among other conclusions was that for group managers involved in the pilot, the achieved savings were driven by reduced audit time, lower administrative costs, and streamlined expectations for responsible forest management.
Can it go any faster?
In the end of the side meeting an attendee stated that bringing smallholders into the FSC system is not going fast enough. Vera Santos, Program Manager at FSC International, responded with the final words of the meeting:
“We would like to see 50 million ha under the management or ownership of smallholder communities and / or tropical forests. We are still not there; we are still not seeing the growth rate that we want to see. From a program perspective, we are only now moving to the implementation. Many of our colleagues on the ground are sitting here and they can see the opportunities and offers from the projects we have been doing in the last years. You will see things happening more quickly as we go on.”