FOREST CERTIFICATION
To get wood, it must be logged from forests and plantations, and
there is a ongoing effort to reconcile this need while minimizing the
environmental impact of logging activities. In the 80s and 90s, part of
the forest industry, together with environmental and human rights
organizations pushed for more careful and sustainable management of
forest resources, which lead to the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council).
This system awards a set of certifications for forestry and logging
operations (both for secondary forests and tree plantations) that
comply with a set of principles, such as respecting the rights,
participation, and well-being of local peoples, logging in as
sustainable a manner as possible, and respecting laws and international
agreements (for example, those that prohibit illegal logging). In
practice, this means not replacing forests with tree plantations,
leaving animal corridors, allowing the formation of forest understory
and a variety of tree species, minimizing the use of pesticides and
fertilizers... All of that implies that the plantation must be run in a
more complex manner than that of intensive monoculture.
The FSC has a prestigious reputation for its rigorous system of
certification. In 1999, the forest industry created their own
certification scheme, the PEFC (
Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification), which
has a set of principles similar to the FSC but with less transparency,
respect for local people's participation, or oversight by independent
agencies.
Currently, both certification systems are
criticized by environmental organizations in various parts of the
world. However, if virgin paper can't be avoided, the best thing is for
it be certified, because if not, then there no way at all to track the
origin of wood products. Try to find products which have the FSC seal,
because they are from more transparent and ethical loggers than those
of the PEFC, and they participate with environmental and human rights
organizations to encourage better practices. For example, Greenpeace
and the spanish group Ecologistas en Acción (Environmentalists in
Action) managed to get an FSC certificate revoked from some ENCE
plantations in Galicia where it was shown to be undeserved.
Several Mediterranean countries currently certify their forestry
operations by these standards. For example, Spain has some 0,72% of its
total forest area certified as FSC and 7,29% certified as PEFC; Italy
has 0,36% FSC and 5,58% PEFC; France 0,10% FSC and 32,08% PEFC; and
Morocco 0,57% of FSC certified forest.