Forest Certification

Forest certification is a process of verifying, in a creditable way, that a forest is managed in accordance with a publicly available standard, which ensures that forests are managed in an economically, environmentally and socially responsible manner.

Forest certification has expanded rapidly in the world since 1993 and in 2006 covered almost 700 million hectares of plantations and native forests across the globe.

The largest international umbrella forest certification system is the Program for Endorsement of Forests Certification (PEFC) – almost 500 million hectares worldwide.  The PEFC endorses a large number of individual country schemes including the Australian Forestry Standard (AFS) in this country.  As of early 2007 across Australia there was 13 million hectares certified under the AFS scheme.  In Queensland all plantations and native forests available for production that are managed by the State Government are certified under the AFS scheme.

The second largest international forest certification system is the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) - almost 200 million hectares worldwide.  The FSC scheme is often portrayed as the ‘greenest’ of the certification schemes and has wide support from environmental groups. There are over 500,000 ha of forests in Australia that are certified under the FSC scheme. Although native forests can be certified under the FSC scheme, none have been certified in Queensland.

Click here to see the recent (2006) Forests and Wood Products 'A Review of Forest Certification in Australia'.

Both forest certification systems have Chain of Custody (CoC) certification available for timber processors.  This is required if processors wish to label their products as certified.  As of 2007 two Queensland timber processors have CoC certification under the AFS.  However, a number of Queensland processors are working towards gaining CoC certification, and this number will only grow as the market for certified wood products increases.

In 2006 AgForests commissioned a ‘Gap Analysis and Options for Certification of Private Native Forests in Queensland’ under both the AFS and FSC forest certification schemes to identify if certification is possible for producers and what changes they would need to make if any to achieve this.  Key report findings were:

• Most of Queensland’s private native forest growers and producers would be able to attain certification in either scheme with relatively minor changes to their overall property management.
• Becoming certified as an individual grower or producer will generally be too expensive, however when a member of a certified producer group (not necessarily a Co-Op) the cost becomes more affordable.
• Forest certification is unlikely to be taken up by Queensland’s growers and producers until the market demand for certified wood products grows and the cost of certification can be justified.   

The Australian Forest Growers (AFG) industry organisation has developed an information series to assist growers and producers in understanding how to become certified under the AFS as an individual or group – Certification to the Australian Forestry Standard for Small-Scale Growers.

The National Association of Forest Industries (NAFI) is also running a Certification for Small Private Forest Grower Ownerships project that will see the development of an information package to assist producers become certified.