FSC reflected in scientific and professional literature

Forest Stewardship Council
holders accept plantations as a “must”, because the demand for wood and pulp is ever growing
and plantation forestry can reduce pressures on natural forests, as well as promote the
restoration and conservation of natural forests. These FSC stakeholders appreciate the fact
that FSC offers the tools to improve plantation forest management. Only when the critique
against FSC plantation certification is directly built on concrete examples of certified plantations,
FSC and the certification bodies and plantation managers can react accordingly.
Some of the plantation certificates are being opposed by individuals and organizations for
example in South American countries and in South Africa, because of their environmental and
social impacts. South Africa is perhaps the country where the diverse perspectives about
FSC-certified plantations stand out most clearly. Unclear land rights, influence on the water
regime and on biodiversity, are the main topics critically discussed. Some of the organizations
are campaigning that “plantations are not forests”, and therefore lobby FSC to reconsider the
certification of large-scale monoculture tree plantations (e.g. Timberwatch Coalition 96 with a
focus on South African plantations; the Rainforest Foundations US, UK and Norway, and the
World Rainforest Movement (with a focus on Latin America) and more recently the Global
Forest Coalition.
Newsom and Hewitt (2005) found
“the issue of exotic species and pests was addressed with requirements for changed management
in significantly more FSC-certified operations in more developed countries than
less developed ones (40% and 9%, of the 129 forest management units respectively).
Many conditions regarding exotic species and pests required operations to implement policies
that encouraged the use of native species over exotics. Addressing potential insect
outbreaks featured prominently in conditions; often operations were required to document
and monitor insect outbreaks, or to incorporate integrated pest management techniques
into their management plans. The higher percentage of operations in more developed
countries required to address exotic species and pests may be because temperate forests
tend to be less diverse than tropical ones, making them more susceptible to insect outbreaks.”
97
Improvements in South African plantations
96 http://www.timberwatch.org.za/certification.htm (as of July 2008)
97 Newsom, Deanna and Hewitt, Daphne (2005): The Global Impacts of SmartWood Certification. Final Report of
the TREES Program for the Rainforest Alliance. (as of June 2008: ) http://www.rainforestalliance.org/programs/forestry/perspectives/documents/sw_impacts.pdf
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