Article by Ida Rehnström
FSC is being recognized as the world’s most trusted responsible forest certification system and to maintain that position, FSC needs to continue to work on integrity and new solutions.
FSC’s Systems Integrity team led the side meeting “Upholding Integrity Within FSC” to give an update on what is being done in the field of integrity and what’s in the pipeline for combatting the violation of FSC standards and policies.
What is system integrity?
System integrity is about how FSC can ensure that the certification system is protected from certificate holders who violate FSC standards or FSC’s Policy for Association. Part of that is ensuring that organizations who are found guilty of any wrongdoing face consequences, and that FSC takes a more proactive role in mitigating risks in the first place.
Marc Jessel, Chief System Integrity Officer kicked off the session with a few words on the 3 underlying principles for FSC’s integrity work. First, how they work towards no false claims within the system and a strong monitoring and execution of the Policy for Association. Second, the underlying principle for integrity has to do with technology and the third which has to do with working with partners to leverage skills and expertise. As Marc said:
“With 52.000 certificates globally, we need to move to a tech and science enabled approach. That means that a lot of our investments are going into the testing of new technologies.”
What has been done since the General Assembly in 2017?
Saija Hotti, Program Manager, Dispute System Transformation and Elena Tveritinova, Program Manager Supply Chain Integrity gave an update.
The updated Policy for Association and complaint procedure, a new disclosure procedure for screening of organizations and an advice note on false claims for penalizing of deliberate fraud are some examples of what’s been done. Also, as part of a more proactive approach, a series of global investigations were conducted that led to 88 companies being blocked based on fraudulent activities and two corporate groups being disassociated.
The top tech trends that FSC is looking at right now
FSC is testing multiple new tech-based solutions to shape future integrity work, including ‘Risk Based Interventions’, fiber testing and Iso-Archiving, Blockchain, and the work with World Forest ID Consortium. But most importantly, future work to combine these trends was highlighted.
Mitigating risk in a digital future
The panel went on to talk about how to mitigate risk and the role that FSC can play in a more data driven future. We heard from Robert Shaw from Soil Association Certification Limited, who believed that digitalization of auditing is key to better and more transparent data:
“Digital transformation of the whole system needs to take place because we’re still operating on a very paper-based system.”
A question from the room was if FSC is enough to deal with general growing global demands for clarity of origin and documentation. Marc Jessel, Chief System Integrity Officer responded:
“We never tell certificate holders that certification substitutes the need for due diligence just as we don’t campaign for green lanes.” In other words, FSC shall not be seen as a replacement for companies’ own due diligence.
Francisco Rodríguez Aspillaga from CMPC described how they as a company experience demand for documentation and how they implement their own due diligence systems alongside FSC.
The role of certification bodies and their overseeing organization ASI was touched by Emmanuelle Berenger, who mentioned a project that Rainforest Alliance had on assigning certification bodies to certificate holders. Catalina Romero from Assurance Services International described what ASI is doing in the field of integrity services and actions."
Robert Shaw, Technical Manager at Soil Association added:
“Auditing is a tough thing to do, it’s not romantic and it’s often very time pressured (..) if we’re going to try and digitalize that, we shouldn’t be too ambitious about trying to gather millions of pieces of data, we have to trust competent auditors.”
To learn more about Risk-based interventions, join the side event “Growing the Value of Certification Using Data” on Friday 14 October 2022.
To learn more about blockchain and fiber testing, join the side event “How will Technology and Science Ensure Traceability of Supply Chains from Forest to the Final Product?” on Thursday Oct 13.
To learn more about integrity work and technology, follow FSC’s podcast “Forest for the Future”.
https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/episode-36-providing-proof-of-the-origin/id1509900587?i=1000547881275&l=da and https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/episode-28-fsc-members-edition-more-digital-technology/id1509900587?i=1000539468766&l=da