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Forests for people – the FSC perspective
FSC supports responsible forest management at all scales and on all
continents. This means taking into account a vast array of ownership
situations, ranging from small private woodlots to large private and
public forests and extensive areas of forest managed by communities
at a low intensity for non-timber forest products.
Setting standards for such a wide range of situations that are rele-
vant in tropical and temperate environments is a huge challenge
that FSC has successfully addressed. Through the development
of national standards, using FSC procedures that ensure balanced
representation of different stakeholder groups and based on the FSC
principles and criteria, standards are adapted to local conditions and
made appropriate to different situations.
Since its inception, FSC has placed a significant focus on ensur-
ing that small-scale and community producers have access to, and
benefit from, certification. The FSC principles emphasize the recog-
nition of and respect for indigenous peoples’ rights, the endorsement
of the rights of forest workers, and the importance of effective and
meaningful stakeholder consultation. The concept of forests for
people is at the heart of FSC certification.
While FSC has always sought to put people at the centre of its
certification, a balance is also needed between reducing costs and
bureaucracy to make FSC certification accessible to small-scale
producers and communities and maintaining high standards of forest
management, monitoring and evaluation. In this delicate process, a
number of milestones are evident in FSC’s continuing dedication to
putting in place fair, inclusive and people-centred policies.
Group certification procedures, introduced in 1998, allow small-scale
forest producers and processors to work together for FSC certification.
The group structure reduces certification costs for individual members;
a group or resource manager like FECOFUN is responsi-
ble for ensuring that group members understand the FSC
requirements and put them into practice.
In 1999, the concept of High Conservation Value Forests
was introduced to define areas of outstanding biological,
ecological, social and cultural importance. By using such a
holistic approach, which incorporates both the ecological
and the social, the HCVF concept recognizes the needs
and rights of many otherwise marginalized peoples, for
whom forests provide not only food and timber products,
but also spiritual and cultural sustenance.
The standard for small and low-intensitymanaged forests
(SLIMFs), introduced in 2004, was a further ground-
breaking policy for FSC. Developed through participatory
mechanisms, the SLIMF approach streamlined the proce-
dures for certifying small community forests, making FSC
certification more accessible to small-scale producers and
communities. National SLIMF standards have been devel-
oped in Brazil, Cameroon, Mexico and Sweden and are
under development in a number of other countries, setting
out clear and appropriate requirements for such forests.
Furthermore, all FSC national standards for forest manage-
ment now need to include indicators that are specific to
small, low-intensity and community forests, to make them
more easily applied to these types of forests.
Working in partnership has impacts on the ground
Group certification schemes, as well as the SLIMF stand-
ards for small, low-intensity and community managed
forests, offer important opportunities for small-scale
Local people measuring their forest in preparation for developing their forest operational plan
Image: ANSAB, Nepal