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Is Controlled Wood controllable?
29 June 2011
The Controlled Wood standard is once again the topic no 1 of the General Assembly. There is general agreement that the system is far from perfect. Can it be fixed? Or is it better to rethink the whole concept?
The discussion on the future of Controlled Wood (CW) at the FSC General Assemby 2011 centers around two major pathways: Short-term fixes and long
term, major changes.
Fixing the system
During meetings and events, stakeholders have presented several suggestions and thoughts on how the existing system can be fixed to ensure
improved enforcement of the requirements.
Risk Assessment
The most obvious problem is related to the risk assessments done by certified companies, including great variability in the assessments of the same area as well as too frequent designation of low risk.
 According to a review of the Controlled Wood system carried out by FSC-IC, certification bodies are not reviewing the contents or rigor of the risk assessments properly. A suggested solution to this is to speed up the process of developing national risk assessments.
Field verification audits
Field verification audits in areas of with unspecified risk are required and may be carried out by the companies themselves. The standard requires qualified personnel do the auditing, but downstream industries often do not have sufficient capacity for this.
The most “radical” solution suggested by FSC members is to require full scale CW forest management certification for any sourcing in areas with “unspecified risk”. A less rigorous option is to require the field audits to be done by accredited certification bodies.
Tracking the wood back to its origin
Another difficulty is the requirement to track incoming material back to the “forest level”. Those who are using the standard in practice – the auditing bodies and certified companies – find this impossible for downstream companies. This topic is very controversial, since many companies are using “alternative” methods of tracking the origin, so strict enforcement of the requirements will cause many companies problems.
While there is no “fix” for this problem, a possible way of restoring some credibility to the CW system would be to restrict the option of field verification to companies close to the forest level. The idea has been suggested but did not gain large support. Yet, it remains a hidden problem, which will continue to undermine the credibility and robustness of the system if not dealt with in an open and honest way.
….or rethinking the Controlled Wood concept?
Addressing the above issues would clearly help restore trust in the CW system. But the fundamental questions remain: does CW actually help increase the certified forest area ? Does the system push companies to increasingly source FSC-pure material? In other words, is there a permanent place in the FSC system for CW, or should it be seen as a temporary tool, to be phased out over the long term?
 Some motions on the table for this GA suggest a limited time period for companies to use CW. This may seem like a good compromise; but with tens of thousands of certificate holders, each with a different deadline for phasing out CW, such proposals would likely create too much complexity when it comes to the passing along of claims down through the supply chain.
A complete phasing out of CW has been mentioned, but this has not been seriously discussed yet at this GA. Without an alternative in place, this would effectively mean abolishing FSC Mix product groups and returning to the FSC Pure products. This is seen as an impossible path to take by the majority of the economic chamber members.
The most difficult questions surrounding CW thus remain largely unexplored. Time will tell, if this GA will be successful in tackling some of these issues in a way acceptable to the global FSC community.
Related articles:
Controlled Wood: hot in 2008, red-hot in 2011? (report from 2011 General Assembly 27/6 2011)
Greenpeace: FSC needs to work harder (18/03 2011)
New corruption figures: changes in Controlled Wood risk (10/12 2009)
Controlled Wood back on track? (12/11 2008) |
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