steps towards the development of a certification system for ...

ABSTRACTIt is expected that international biomass trade will significantly increase in the comingyears because of the possibly lower costs of imported biomass, the better supply securitythrough diversification and the support by energy and climate policies of variouscountries. Concerns about potential negative effects of large scale biomass productionand export, like deforestation or the competition between food and biomass production,have led to the demand for sustainability criteria and certification systems that cancontrol biomass trade. Because neither such criteria and indicator sets nor certificationsystems for sustainable biomass trade are yet available the objective of this study is togenerate information that can help to develop them. For this purposes existingcertification systems, sets of sustainability criteria or guidelines on environmental orsocial sound management of resources are analyzed with the purpose to learn about therequirements, contents and organizational set ups of a certification system for sustainablebiomass trade.This study contains six parts. First an inventory of existing certification systems andmanagement guidelines that provide insight in key elements for the development of acertification systems for sustainable biomass trade was made. In the second part thestructures of certification systems were analyzed. In the third and fourth part differentapproaches to formulate standards were described and a list of more than 100 social,economic, ecological and general criteria for sustainable biomass trade was extractedfrom the reviewed systems. Fifth, methods to formulate indicator, that makesustainability criteria measurable, and verifier, that are used to control the performance ofindicators, are described. The sixth part contains recommendations for the developmentof a certification system for sustainable biomass trade.The inventory of existing certification systems showed that there are different systemsavailable for the forestry and agricultural sector. Agricultural certification systems,however, do not address the integration of biomass production systems. There are alsosystems for chain-of-custody control and fair trading, but not yet for the transport sector.For the internationally applied certification systems it was found that they are generallyled by an international panel that represents all countries and stakeholder involved in theactivities.All certification systems contain standards, which define the aim of certification anddescribe the product or production process specific requirements to be fulfilled forcertification. These requirements are described by criteria. For every criterion differentindicators are needed to describe them and to make them measurable. The inventory ofexisting systems showed that not for all criteria, which are relevant for sustainablebiomass trade, indicators are available. Important aspects of biomass trade for whichassessment methods and indicators need to be developed are leakage effects, food andenergy supply security, local benefits of biomass trade, combatement of poverty,greenhouse gas impacts and additionality.The development of criteria and indicator (C&I) sets for sustainability standards requiresthe involvement of stakeholders because sustainability definition has to be performed2