Footprints in the forest - Fern

owners association) after a third-party audit was conducted by a certification
body. A prerequisite for submitting the application for the regional certification is
that the applicant represents forest owners which posses at least 50% of the area
of all forests in the region The audit is based on a report written by the applicant
itself on the “condition of forest management” in the region, which is evaluated
against the CFCS standard by the certification body. The CFCS is a system-based
standard 31 . The regional certificate is issued for a period of maximum 5 years.
2- Step 2: Once the regional certificate has been issued to the regional applicant,
those individual forest owners in the region who want to be part of the regional
certification scheme must apply to the applicant. The applicant then decides
whether or not to accept the forest owner in the regional certification scheme
based on an analysis of information provided by forest institutions (State Forests
Administration, Czech Inspection of the Environment, etc) on the conditions of
forest management as well as an optional field inspection. The option of a field
visit is left to the discretion of the regional applicant based on whether or not it is
financially feasible. The guidelines encourage the applicant to skip the field visit
when the source of information “guarantees sufficient measure of credibility and
reliability” 32 . If the forest owner is considered to fulfil the certification criteria by
the regional applicant, a “confirmation of participation” is issued to the owner
(but the certificate remains the property of the main applicant).
Only the combined area of those forest owners who have been accepted into the regional
certification scheme is considered and counted as certified area.
Refusal to a forest owner to join the regional certification is considered as a possible
outcome of step 2 in the above process. However, it was not possible to determine if this
has occurred or not. It is unclear how easy in practice it is for forest owners to join the
regional certification. Forest owners can also be expelled from a regional certification if
they are found not to comply with the certification criteria during sample monitoring field
visits. “Conformity with criteria on the individual level is assessed periodically and can
result in the exclusion of the owner from the regional certification” unless the forest owner
him/herself provides “credible evidence” of removing the elements of non-conformity 33 .
No field visits will take place to check the validity of the information provided by the
forest owner on how she/he will remove the elements of non-conformity 34 .
The fact that forest owners must actively submit an application to join the regional
certification scheme implies that all owners within a certified region know whether or not
they are certified. The CFCS documents also stress the importance for the regional
applicant to thoroughly inform all forest owners about the regional certification and
participation conditions.
Other:
31
CFCS 1002:2001 Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management
32
CFCS 1006:2000 Guidelines for Ensuring the Participation of Individual Forest Owners in Regional
Certification p6
33
CFCS 1001:2001
34
CFCS 1006:2000 p 7
14