Forest Certification in Developing and Transitioning ... - UTas ePrints

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forest certification in developing and transitioning countries
The LEI standards provide several documents related to certification
administration. Assessors, for example, should understand LEI doc-1 and LEI doc-2
for field assessment. Assessors must check the detailed indicators in the field as
written in the LEI documents. This is different from FSC certification, which provides
the assessor with a generic standard, which is then elaborated in the field unless an
FSC national working group has developed national or regional standards. Where
those exist, the FSC accredited certifier must then assess practices according to the
endorsed national or regional standard.
the reaction to certification
Forest Policy Community and Stakeholders
After more than ten years of operation in Indonesia, certification has been widely
criticised by several parties. The most vociferous critics are NGOs led by WALHI and
its international network (such as the Rainforest Foundation, Rainforest Action
Network and Down to Earth). In March 2001 a workshop was organized by WALHI
and attended by several NGOs and individuals on the subject of certification. At the
end of the workshop participants signed a statement calling for a temporary halt to
scoping, assessment and issuance of certificates to Indonesia’s forest concessions—in
effect, a forest certification moratorium. In its correspondence, WALHI does not
oppose certification in principle but is opposed to certification in the current situation.
Its position is that no certification of any logging concessions (HPH) can be
credible as long as the concession system and legislation (such as the Forestry Act
No.41/99) fail to grant local communities rights to their land and resources. The
whole concession system must be revised and the borders of indigenous peoples’
lands clearly defined (Down to Earth 2001).
In September 2000 ARuPA—a student forest advocacy group in Jogjakarta—issued a
position paper criticizing the certification of Perum Perhutani done by SmartWood and
its partner in Indonesia, LATIN. They argued that, based on their observations, KPH
Perum Perhutani should not be certified due to ongoing social conflicts and illegal logging.
Some of the corrective actions requests (CARs) imposed on Perhutani were
considered unrealistic. According to some national and local newspapers, ARuPA
claimed that the log transport system was vulnerable to manipulation. Therefore, the
issuance of CoC certificates for furniture industries in Java was not valid (Fuad and
Astraatmaja 2000). The complexities of the Indonesian bureaucracy relating to timber
operations make it easy to mislead certifiers about the sources of timber used by chainof-custody
companies. A field study by the ARuPA indicated a variety of ingenious
methods for illegally harvesting teak plantations and “laundering” the timber so wood
processors could claim they only used legal sources of wood. Local government
officials, security forces and Perhutani staff and senior level bureaucrats were allegedly
implicated in this “legalization” of illegal logging (Down to Earth 2001).
Despite this criticism, there are some NGOs working towards certification. RMI,
Pelangi, YLKI (Yayasan Lembaga Konsumen Indonesia/Indonesian Consumer
yale school of forestry & environmental studies