By Morten Brodde
Nature-based solutions such as ecosystem services help fight climate change and are making the headlines. Day three of the 2022 FSC General Assembly focused on FSC’s contribution to tackle climate change and protect ecosystem services.
What is the Ecosystem Services Procedure?
In 2018, FSC launched the FSC Ecosystem Services Procedure. The procedure is a tool that allows FSC-certified forest owners and managers to identify, measure, and third-party verify the positive impacts of responsible forest management on five categories of ecosystem services. These are currently biodiversity protection, carbon storage, soil conservation, maintenance or improvement of water and watersheds and conservation or improvement of recreational services.
“The procedure is a validation framework for quantitative impacts on ecosystems within a forest”. - Asger Strange Olesen, Chief Climate and Ecosystem Officer, FSC International. “It is important to clarify that the ecosystem services procedure can only be applied on top of an FSC forest management certification. Those two go together”.
Revenue for forests and verified storytelling for businesses
Topping a FSC forest management certificate with verified ecosystem services enables forest managers to access ecosystem services markets through claim sponsorships.
The procedure makes it possible for forest managers to make FSC ecosystem services claims about the specific positive impact they have made – and after validation – connect to investors and sponsors willing to reward this impact financially and interested in documentation to meet net zero targets and policies on ecosystem services.
But it also allows the sponsor or investor to tell a verified story of positive impact on soil conservation or one of the other four categories of ecosystem services. This requires a promotional license issued by a national FSC network partner or FSC International.
Asger Strange Olesen made an important point about the scope of ecosystem claims stressing that “an FSC ecosystem services claim is not a carbon credit”. This means that currently it is not allowed to use FSC ecosystem claims as a tool to offset carbon footprints.
Revision coming up – what’s in focus?
Lauri Moisander, Technical Expert, Forest Management, at FSC International gave a brief overview of the revision process for the Ecosystem Services Procedure that will go on until 2024.
“We will be looking into the core requirements. What do you need to have in order to access the ecosystem services procedure? We will also be looking at tools and solutions that FSC has introduced recently such as the Continuous Improvement Procedure to give small-scale, low-intensity managed and community forests better access to the forest management certification”.
The working group will have strong focus on making the procedure clearer by improving structure and language and look at how to tackle forest management requirements when there are no site disturbing activities in the field. Lauri Moisander also revealed that including cultural values and social indicators in the procedure and improving the communication and promotion around ecosystem claims is also a focus in the revision process.
Changes to increase access for smallholders
On Tuesday morning’s side meeting a panel representing economic, social, and environmental members of the ecosystem services procedure working group shared their ideas on how to increase the use of the procedure.
As the Ecosystem Services Procedure only can be used when a forest holds an FSC Forest Management certificate Jens Holm Kanstrup, Forests of the World, stressed the importance to make certification more feasible for communities:
“A lot of smallholders and communities don’t have management plans and they are not certified. The certification process is a huge barrier for them. One of the main issues is how to find ways to ease access to certification for this group”.
Jens Kanstrup also emphasized that the scope of the current ecosystem services does not mirror the most import forest values of the communities in the tropics that his organization works with:
“Another thing is that most of the ecosystem services that are currently in the procedure are rated fairly low by the communities. They have other benefits from the forest that are rated much higher like cultural values and social-economic benefits”.
Individual member Alan Smith agreed with Jens Kanstrup and underlined the importance of making an understandable ecosystem services procedure:
“Right now, I would stress the importance of having an accessible procedure and an understandable one. We don’t want to make it too complex, and that’s why the word streamlining was in the motion 48”.
The last member of the panel Wesley Snell, ETIFOR, who has been working for several years on writing ecosystem services certification documents primarily for smallholders, recommended that FSC focus on training:
“The procedure itself is important, but in addition it is important that FSC provides resources and training to network partners, so they can train smallholders and communities in order for them to understand how the procedure works in practice”.
The value of ecosystem claims for sponsors must increase
Motion 48 that passed at part 1 of the General Assembly in 2021 is seeking to expand the scope of FSC Ecosystem Services certification and lower barriers to entry for certificate holders. During the panel discussion it was clear that on top of that more needs to be done to ensure that the Ecosystem Services Procedure can generate revenue for communities and smallholders. And for this to happen ecosystem services claims needs to be attractive for sponsors.
When asked what FSC can do on this area Wesley Snell said:
“The end-users want impact data. They want robust claims that they can apply to demonstrate their progress towards meeting their sustainability targets. If you are a company, you want to be able to make a robust claim that is unique, and that belongs to you, so you can very clearly demonstrate that your sponsorship made possible specific management activities that produce quantifiable and externally verifiable impacts whether that’s on biodiversity, water, carbon or recreational services.”
Motion 49 seeks to position FSC better on the ecosystem services markets
While motion 48 from FSC’s general assembly 2021 seeks to improve the use of the Ecosystem Services Procedure from a forest perspective, motion 49 at this year’s general assembly is described as “the demand-side improvements and safeguards necessary to make these procedural revisions worthwhile”.
According to ETIFOR, the proposer of motion 49, the proposal aims to upscale the outreach and value proposition of the Ecosystem Services Procedure.
Specifically, the motion proposes that claims shall be used in accordance with the mitigation hierarchy to meet sponsors' nature-positive targets like foot printing, avoidance, reduction, restoration, and restricted compensation of residual impacts for FSC to meet global market demand and position itself as a high-integrity mitigation tool.
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