FSC reflected in scientific and professional literature

Forest Stewardship Council
2006: 2’582 CoC certificates are coming from 64 countries in the FSC Global South, while
8’529 CoC certificates are coming from 27 countries in the FSC North (see also Table 1).
Cashore (2005) 17 demonstrates that the effectiveness of FSC certification on different sectors
varies and the momentum behind certification has been weak in developing countries. Additionally
Hayward & Vertinsky (1999) 18 stated what many others assumed before:
“Everything else being equal, the most progressive firms are most likely the first ones to
pursue certification - those operations whose practices could most be improved by certification
may be the least likely to join certification. In many cases it is therefore difficult to
verify if a certain change in the forest management was done in preparation of applying for
an FSC certificate or because the forest management anyhow thought that this change
would be useful for the operation.”
1.3.3 Equitable access to certification – benefit for communities
FSC’s high poverty alleviation potential is also seen for community managed forests. Again, it
is evident, that in the early years of FSC, community forestry enterprises have been certified
at slower rates than other operation types (Humphries 2006) 19 . While such operations own an
estimated 25% of the global forests, as of 2007 they account for less than 5% of FSC certified
forests (FSC Global Strategy 2007) 20 . Concrete comparative data on developments in the
proportion of certificates held by community-based or indigenous groups, or certified under
the SLIMFS scheme could not be provided by FSC (with the introduction of a new data base,
FSC is changing the data base menu in 2008 accordingly). Still, many researchers with a focus
on tropical forests point out the slow growth of FSC in the Global South, and those with a
focus on social forestry are raising concerns about the minor proportion of communitymanaged
forests certified.
Some authors explained that the FSC concept was not originally designed for community operations,
not in the South, nor in the North. Many community forest products do not enter the
17 Glück, Peter; Rayner, Jeremy and Cashore, Benjamin (2005): Change in the Governance of Forest Resources.
In: Mery, Gerardo; Alfaro, Rene; Kanninen, Markku and Labovikov, Maxim (eds.) (2005): Forests in the Global
Balance – Changing Paradigms. IUFRO World Series, Vol. 17. Helsinki, 51-74.
http://www.yale.edu/forestcertification/pdfs/2005/2005%20%20Change%20in%20the%20Governance%20of%20Fo
rest%20Resources.pdf (as of June 2008)
18 Hayward, J., Vertinsky, I., 1999. What managers and owners think of certification. Journal of Forestry 97 (2), 13–
17
19 Humphries, Shoana S. and Kainer, Karen A (2006): Local perceptions of forest certification for community based
enterprises. Forest Ecology and Management, Elsevier 235: 30-43.
20 FSC Global Strategy (2007): Strengthening Forest Conservation, Communities and Markets.
http://www.fsc.org/global_strategy.html
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