Comparing Sustainable Forest Management Certifications Standards: A Meta-analysis
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Date
2011
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Abstract
"To solve problems caused by conventional forest management, forest certification has
emerged as a driver of sustainable forest management. Several sustainable forest management certification
systems exist, including the Forest Stewardship Council and those endorsed by the Programme for the
Endorsement of Forest Certification, such as the Canadian Standards Association Sustainable Forestry
Management Standard CAN/CSA - Z809 and Sustainable Forestry Initiative. For consumers to use certified
products to meet their own sustainability goals, they must have an understanding of the effectiveness of
different certification systems. To understand the relative performance of three systems, we determined:
(1) the criteria used to compare the Forest Stewardship Council, Canadian Standards Association
Sustainable Forestry Management, and Sustainable Forestry Initiative, (2) if consensus exists regarding
their ability to achieve sustainability goals, and (3) what research gaps must be filled to improve our
understanding of how forest certification systems affect sustainable forest management. We conducted a
qualitative meta-analysis of 26 grey literature references (books, industry and nongovernmental
organization publications) and 9 primary literature references (articles in peer-reviewed academic journals)
that compared at least two of the aforementioned certification systems. The Forest Stewardship Council
was the highest performer for ecological health and social sustainable forest management criteria. The
Canadian Standards Association Sustainable Forestry Management and Sustainable Forestry Initiative
performed best under sustainable forest management criteria of forest productivity and economic longevity
of a firm. Sixty-two percent of analyses were comparisons of the wording of certification system principles
or criteria; 34% were surveys of foresters or consumers. An important caveat to these results is that only
one comparison was based on empirically collected field data. We recommend that future studies collect
ecological and socioeconomic data from forests so purchasers can select certified forest products based on
empirical evidence."
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Keywords
sustainability, forest management