A framework for assessing the effectiveness of forest certification.

With increasing concerns about the costs of forest management, there is a need to rigorously evaluate any management activities that add to costs. Certification has been widely adopted at considerable financial cost to those managing forests. Although there have been many studies of the impacts of certification, there is no comprehensive framework for assessing whether or not certification has been effective in achieving its goals. To do this, certification needs to be viewed as a part of an international environmental regime. Using established methodologies, this paper applies an evaluation framework and examines forest certification effectiveness in a number of categories: problem solving, goal attainment, behavioural effectiveness, process effectiveness, constitutive effectiveness, and evaluative effectiveness. It is too early to assess its effectiveness in problem solving and goal attainment. However, forest certification has been quite successful at process and constitutive effectiveness and is now widely recognized by a range of institutions. Its effectiveness in changing behaviours is less clear, and its evaluative effectiveness remains to be determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]