Slide 4 of 53
Notes:
The move towards forest certification accelerated in the 1990’s following the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. An Intergovernmental Panel on Forests was established by the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in 1995. In 1997, an Intergovernmental Forum on Forests succeeded the IPF. The final meeting of this group was held in February 2000. The report is available at: http://www.un.org/documents/ecosoc/cn17/2000/ecn172000-14.htm. In 1993, the majority of European countries endorsed six criteria for defining sustainable forests in the Helsinki Process. In 1994 the Montreal Process covering boreal and temperate Forests was formed and lead to the Santiago Declaration in 1995. The USA endorsed this latter convention. It contains seven criteria and 67 indicators that are used to define sustainable forest management: 1) biodiversity conservation, 2) maintenance of ecosystem productivity, 3) maintenance of ecosystem health and vitality, 4) soil and water conservation, 5) maintenance of forest contributions to global carbon cycles, 6) maintenance of long-term multiple socioeconomic benefits and 7) legal/policy/ institutional frameworks for forest conservation and sustainable management.
Developed in parallel with these international movements to define sustainable forestry, certification was aimed at both forests and forest products. We refer to the former as forest certification and the latter as chain-of-custody. Not all certification schemes embrace the latter component.
