Certification

What is forest certification?

Forest certification usually comprises at least four elements:

Forest management standards – documents which set out the requirements which must be met by the forest manager and against which certification assessments are made.
Certification - a process to establish whether or not the standard has been met.
Accreditation – a mechanism to ensure that the organizations which undertake certification are independent and professionally competent (sometimes referred to as "certifying the certifiers").
A mechanism to control claims - including procedures to enforce a set of rules for organizations making claims relating to the quality of forest management.

Forest certification in the U.S. hardwood sector

The U.S. long history of private sector involvement in forest management has meant it has been a pioneer in the development of voluntary forest certification schemes. The U.S. is host to the world's first forest management certification scheme, the American Tree Farm System (ATFS)[1], which was launched more than 60 years ago. Other systems operating in the United States include the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI)[2] , a scheme launched in 1996 to promote good forestry practice throughout the U.S. and subsequently extended to Canada, and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)[3] . Both the SFI and ATFS have been endorsed by the Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC)[4]. Around 50 million hectares (25%) of the 204 million hectares of total U.S. timberland had been certified by mid 2008

Despite these pioneering efforts, implementation of forest certification in the hardwood producing regions of the United States has been slow due to the severe fragmentation of forest ownership. The current position of the three forest certification systems operating in the U.S. in relation to the hardwood sector is as follows:

The FSC has issued around 100 forest management certificates with a total area of 10 million hectares of forest land. Average certified area per certificate is therefore high, at around 100,000 hectares. Around 60% of certified area consists of large tracts of publicly owned forest land. Much of the remainder is in large privately owned forest holdings. Some of these areas are able to supply FSC certified hardwoods (e.g. State of Pennsylvania forest lands, Forestland Group), but only constitute a tiny proportion of overall hardwood supply. FSC regional standards in the U.S. are not well adapted for application by non-industrial forest owners.
The American Tree Farm System (ATFS), which has certified around 10 million hectares in the U.S. distributed amongst 90,000 participants, has been evolved for smaller owners. However awareness of the ATFS program remains very low in hardwood producing regions of the U.S.
The Sustainable Forestry Initiative, which has certified around 30 million hectares of forest land in the U.S., is designed specifically for certification of large forest tracts. The certified area is made up almost exclusively of large areas of industrial forest land supplying raw material to the pulp, paper, panel products and softwood lumber industries.

The challenge of certifying small forest owners

Efforts are now underway in the United States, as in other parts of the world, to develop and implement “group certification” procedures for small forest owners. However these efforts, which are being managed by ATFS and FSC, are still in their early stages. Only a tiny proportion of small forest owners in the U.S. are currently covered by such schemes.

Significant time and resources would need to be devoted to overcome remaining obstacles to this approach. A key challenge is to generate sufficient support amongst the huge and diverse constituency of small forest owners to provide adequate throughput of certified material to facilitate labeling of U.S. hardwoods.

Creating awareness of forest certification amongst the owners of hardwood forest land is a major challenge for all the programs. According to a recent survey, forest certification systems (including ATFS, FSC and SFI) have very low awareness (17%) amongst U.S. family forest owners [5]. It also difficult to encourage small owners to work together for group certification in a sector where there is little or no tradition of co-operative action.

Another problem is that the market incentive for achieving certification is weak amongst owners that do not rate timber production as a major reason for owning forest land and that might harvest only once in a generation. According to the National Woodland Owners Survey [6], only about 10% of family forest owners that collectively account for 30% of the area in family forests identify timber production as an important reason for owning forest.

A particular obstacle to FSC certification is that the regional certification standards were developed primarily for larger operations and are not well adapted to non-industrial forest owners. A recent paper commissioned by FSC-US notes that “the current regional standards are generally not approachable from the perspective of the family forest owner or manager. The standards are also difficult to audit or implement on small properties.”[7] The paper notes that to date only a few relatively small groups - usually comprising less than 100 individual forest parcels - managed by consulting foresters or small forestry associations have been FSC certified. It is noted that “certification costs are still deemed high by many participants and seen as an obstacle to participation. This is illustrated by the high turnover rate of group certificates in the U.S. Many group certificates only function because they receive some type of subsidy from individual family forests to participate in the FSC system.”

Challenge of traceability

Fragmentation of forest ownership also means that it is extremely difficult to trace wood from individual forest to point of sale. A research paper has summarised the problems of traceability in the American hardwood sector using a case study of a large sawmilling company in Pennsylvania to illustrate the sourcing practices typical of an American hardwood exporting company[8].

The mill does not own or control forest, as is the case for most U.S. hardwood sawmills, and instead buys raw material directly from at least 800 small private forest owners within a 25-100 mile radius. To augment its own production, the sawmill also buys sawn lumber from 40 other smaller sawmills, which in turn may buy from at least 1,000 out of the 500,000 private forest owners in the state. So each year this single mill will buy timber derived from around 1800 forest owners. In the following year, supplies will derive from a different set of 1800 forest owners. The sawmill also buys some "gatewood" logs which are offered at the gate of a sawmill by independent logging contractors or hauliers from one or more forests that may not be identified to the buyer.

Even if certified logs were available, it would be technically difficult and prohibitively expensive to alter mill operations to ensure separation of certified and uncertified raw material, either by physical segregation or by batch processing of certified and uncertified material at different times. The sawmill and dimension plant production flow involves 104 sort combinations on the green (pre-drying) sawmill grading line alone. Production involves sorting by species, grade, length, width and thickness on an accumulation basis until a bundle quantity is collected. Thus one bundle may gradually accumulate from numerous shifts using many different parcels of logs. There is additional sorting on the dry grading line to deal with degraded material after kilning. Without widespread availability of certified logs, to achieve certification this mill would have to run dual stocks and duplicate production and plant facilities.

There are instances where forest products can be certified and tracked relatively easily. For example, when large volumes of wood raw material are derived from large tracts of forest under single ownership, and where production is focused on a limited range of relatively simple products. Those U.S. hardwood suppliers that can benefit in this way from economies of scale, and simple trading chains, have undergone FSC certification and are now able to supply a limited range of certified products at premium prices. However these remain the exception rather than the rule.

It is ironic that a major factor preventing widespread forest certification in the American hardwood sector has also made a significant contribution to the sustainable management of the nation's forests. The dominance of small non-industrial forest owners has meant there is a strong link between U.S. rural communities and forests. Through living and working in the forests all their lives, many U.S. citizens have gained a deep understanding of forest management.

So lack of certification does not imply lack of sustainability. In the case of American hardwoods, the forests are themselves living proof of sustainability. Seventy years of forest inventory data provides ample evidence that the resource is thriving.

For further discussion of the challenges of traceability in the U.S. hardwood sector, see the feature article "The Missing Link".

[1] Link to www.treefarmsystem.org
[2] Link to www.sfiprogram.org
[3] Link to http://www.fsc.org/
[4] Link to http://www.pefc.org/
[5] Getting the Attention of Family Forest Owners, Geoff Feinberg, Sustaining Family Forests Initiative, July 2006
[6] Family Forest Owners of the United States, Brett Butler, 2008, USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, GTR-NRS-27, http://nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/gtr_nrs27.pdf
[7] Family Forest Program and Small Low Intensity Forests as a Cross Cutting Issue in the Standard Review Process, February 2006, Phil Guillery, Forest Stewardship Council
[8] Michael Buckley, Sourcing US hardwood materials for French Furniture Manufacture: A 'Chain of Custody' Case Study, Journal of the Institute of Wood Science, Volume 15, No 4, Winter 2000