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Forest management certification in the Americas: difficulties in complying with the requirements of the FSC system
- Source :
- International Forestry Review. 22:169-188
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- Commonwealth Forestry Association, 2020.
-
Abstract
- 'Forest management' aims to maintain forests as producers of goods and services, while ensuring their conservation for future generations. Forest certification has become one of the most widely used mechanisms to encourage and recognize this 'forest stewardship', with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) among the most well-known systems worldwide. FSC is widely used in several Management Units on the American Continent, which is home to large forest areas. Therefore, we evaluated the main difficulties in complying with the principles of the FSC standard in 18 American countries based on verification of non-conformities generated in the process. The data were obtained from information contained in the certification audit reports available on the FSC official website, covering all organizations with valid certificates from 1995 to 2013. We found that the United States presented the lowest mean of non-conformities per audit, which may indicate better capacity of managers to implement practices of its forestry activities. Regarding the deviation type, the United States and Canada presented higher indices in relation to the adequacy of the environmental impacts (P6) of their activities. Meanwhile, the greatest non-conformities in the Central and South America countries occurred in the labor and social area (P4), followed by environmental issues (P6). All organizations presented some type of non-compliance with the criteria set by the FSC and needed to adapt. The major difficulties encountered were related to compliance with environmental requirements. The need to implement corrective actions to maintain the certificate demonstrates a change of management influenced by the forest certification process, thus contributing to minimizing socio-environmental impacts resulting from forest operations.
- Subjects :
- 040101 forestry
Ecology
business.industry
Geography, Planning and Development
Environmental resource management
Forest management
Forestry
04 agricultural and veterinary sciences
Audit
Certification
Certificate
Certified wood
Goods and services
Environmental governance
0401 agriculture, forestry, and fisheries
Business
Stewardship
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 14655489
- Volume :
- 22
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- International Forestry Review
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........639d943bb276cb402b2e1c4443d93d0a