FSC reflected in scientific and professional literature

Forest Stewardship Council
Nussbaum and Simula state the above for forest certification in general, but as FSC was in
2004 in most of the countries mentioned the only active forest certification scheme with considerable
activities, the described impacts can be assumed for FSC.
The impact on social and labor policy issues
Peter Poschen (2003) for the International Labor Organization (ILO) appreciates certification
as promoter of good social and labor practices, but he doubts that certification can show
broadly impacts. He summarized his findings:
“Social and labor aspects need to be brought into focus to balance the current bias towards
ecological and sometimes economic functions. It is encouraging that the FSC and
to some extent the PEFC are incorporating the above suggestions into their schemes. All
avenues should be pursued to promote good social and labor practices in forestry: forest
policy fora such as the regional “processes, codes of forest practices, and voluntary initiatives
such as certification. For the latter two consistencies, harmonization and minimum
standards are desirable. This paper has shown that much of the ground can be covered
by using ILO texts to define criteria and indicators, to serve as reference for threshold values
and verifiers. Certification has already made a valuable contribution to policy discussions
and is contributing to improvements on the ground for people living in forests or depending
on them. Its impact will, however, be limited because it can only address problems
at the forest enterprise level and because the incentives will mostly attract firms with
strong connections to western markets as well as with relatively high forest management
standards.” 363
FSC’s meta-governance role
Ingrid Visseren-Hamakers’ and Pieter Glasbergen’s paper on “Partnerships in forest
governance” (2006) analyses the changes in the international forest biodiversity governance
sys-tem, describing five forest certification schemes. In the chapter “Partner-ships for
sustainable logging” they state that
363 Poschen, Peter (2003): Economic and Social Justice. In: Meidinger, E., C. Elliott, and G. Oesten (eds.) Social
and political dimensions of forest certification. Remagen-Oberwinter, Germany: Dr. Kessel. pp.63-82.
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