Certified insight #1: Certification’s lost audience and new hope from risk-based approaches

In a previous incarnation, where I was leading a WWF programme that looked to engage the timber and forestry sector, the world seemed a simpler place. There were problems and we (the NGOs) had the solutions –  stepwise approach to improving the profile of timber supply chains and creating lots more certified forests: preferably FSC. It was a plan (quite a good one I still think) that was recognising a belief that governments did not care much and were slow in implementing change. Markets though could move fast, and the private sector could respond and fill the gaps in forest governance. As far as the approach went it worked, but sadly only for some. Thirty years on from the first certified forests we can see that forest management unit (FMU) certification, in all its flavours has probably peaked in terms of area certified. But how can this be?

In an ever more regulated world where markets demand legal, deforestation-free, sustainable timber products, where purchasing policies have developed almost into an artform, surely there must be an ever-growing demand for more and more certified forest area? It appears that there isn’t – at least not for the types of FMU certification that we have all grown used to.

When trust in forest governance was low the idea of the private sector moving ahead and showing that it can meet higher standards (higher than what the law requires) then FMU certification was an excellent way to differentiate one business operation from another. If governments were failing then why shouldn’t the private sector, its customers, investors and friendly NGOs plough their own furrow so to speak. The certification stampede has now appeared to have reached its natural limits – with around 400 million hectares of production forests certified globally. That is around 10% of the world’s forests and this figure has remained the same for a number of years having peaked a few years ago at 13%.

10% is quite an achievement but what about the rest? Are 90% of the world’s forests all poorly managed? Are they all at risk of deforestation or severe degradation? Can the governments of the countries with large areas of forest just universally not be trusted to do anything? Thankfully, the world of forest governance is not black and white. There are many shades of grey. Some countries have very low percentages of certified forests, but this does not mean that there isn’t regulation, enforcement and in many cases, pride. When it is bad – we all should call it out. When it works and safeguards forests – how do we recognise it if we can’t fit it in the certification box?

The majority of the world’s forest is owned or managed by smallholders, local communities, and indigenous peoples. Defining the term smallholder is worthy of its own academic paper, but smaller farmers with modest areas of forest or woodland that make only a small share of their living from their trees are the smallholders I refer to. They are not big business, and they are not well resourced. They are usually passionate about their trees and in the main are doing their best to keep the forested areas they inherited so they can pass this on to the next generation.

In some countries these smallholders have long collaborated as associations or in large industrial cooperatives (such as in Finland and Sweden) and they have been able to engage with certification. In some circumstances the largest companies have been able to form groups of smallholders and make group certification work.  For most of the world though smallholders stand alone and can’t or won’t work in these ways. These smallholders are collectively one of the largest ownership groups, controlling a large part of the world’s productive forests. Should we just ignore them or boycott them (or even penalise them) for not falling into line? Or should we value what they do and recognise that there are other ways of demonstrating that there is good forest governance in place, that smallholders are law abiding and that they are not in the business of liquidating their forests?

This is where American Hardwood Assured comes in. AHA’s jurisdictional risk-based approach to the assessment of legal compliance and deforestation-free status has been developed in the last two years for U.S. hardwood forests which are distributed amongst 9.5 million mainly family owners.

AHA works at scale where there is low risk of both illegality and deforestation. Its pragmatic enough to recognise that illegalities happen, and that deforestation occurs – it just recognises that these are not normal events and are risks that can be managed. The assessments of legality indicate that across the thirty-three hardwood producing states in the U.S., illegal logging and associated trade is not systematic or widespread. There are good laws (and some new laws) that provide a governance framework that evolves and works. The assessment of deforestation risk on a county-by-county basis indicates that deforestation has occurred at meaningful levels in only a small number of counties across more than 1500 surveyed. The counties that are affected can be flagged and avoided or checked more thoroughly and the risk mitigated. Given the breadth of legislation involved in U.S. forest governance it seems almost churlish to focus on legal compliance and deforestation – the layers of governance and approaches are in fact comprehensive and achieve something beyond this humdrum but important concern.

What AHA has come up with is something that deserves to be given a chance and to be recognised in the marketplace. It is the sort of innovation that recognises that the `forest world’ is a complex place where smallholders play an important role. It is a way of recognising what U.S. smallholders contribute to the health and safeguarding of the U.S. hardwood resource. It will allow markets to recognise this role and to be assured that by buying hardwoods assessed by the scheme that they are contributing in a positive way.

If the world is to see further growth in the area of forest that is certified, then the next step is to consider other ways to recognise where good things are happening and bad things are controlled. Jurisdictional approaches have huge potential and AHA’s approach across the hardwood producing states is a signpost to how other regions of the world, long excluded by certification, might claim their seat at the market policy table. In the pursuit of certification, we seem to have allowed perfection to become the enemy of the good. While FMU certification is still the best option for large operations, I now believe that an independent jurisdictional risk-based approach underpinned by good forest governance is the best option in those forest areas where smallholders predominate.

George White