WULF KILLMANN
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
At its forty-second session, the Committee recommended that, during the lapse of time to its next session in 2002, FAO undertake the following activities:
• Support the industry's efforts to monitor the carbon value chain through its knowledge of forestry and forest products and undertake and/or continue projects on carbon in forests and forest products.
• Clarify the existing definitions of forestry issues related to climate change.
• Endorse the concept of mutual recognition based on forest management, marketing and trade access benefits that an International Framework for Mutual Recognition can provide.
• Acknowledge the technical work carried out by the International Forest Industry Roundtable's (IFIR) Working Group on Mutual Recognition during 1999/2000 and its Framework Proposal Report, dated February 2001.
• Endorse the IFIR/IFFPA (International Forum of Forest and Paper Associations) Action Plan for ongoing open consultations with all stakeholders, refinement of Framework components and implementation during 2001/2002.
• Support further dialogue, discussion, development and implementation through, for example, the provision of:
• technical support to further development of substantive equivalence assessment tools and methodologies;
• financial and technical support targeting small and developing countries and small and community forest owner groups to develop certification systems and performance standards that could become part of the International Mutual Recognition Framework.
Continue its activities in recovered paper, principally in clarifying definitions and classifications of recovered paper grades.
As mentioned during the meeting, FAO reviewed these recommendations in the light of their compliance with the objectives and policies of the Organization. The results of this evaluation were communicated to the members of the Committee, and further discussions on the recommendations were held at an intermediary meeting on 8 October 2001.
The Forestry Department has established and filled a new senior staff position "Forests and Climate Change" which would in the future cope with the recommendations of the Committee and requests from member countries in this area. The secretariat of UNFCC has contacted FAO with a request to collaborate in the technical assessment of national communications on carbon; and, with the creation of the above-mentioned post, FAO is in a position to comply with this request.
Within the Dutch-funded Project "Forestry and Climate Change in Central America", FAO has started to assist Central American countries in preparing themselves for the commitments and opportunities resulting from the agreement reached at the Conference of Parties (COP) 7 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakech.
FAO, jointly with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and in collaboration with the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO), has organized an Expert Meeting on Harmonizing Forest-related Definitions for Use by Various Stakeholders, held at FAO Headquarters in Rome from 23 to 25 January 2002.
The objective of the meeting was to start a process to review, improve, where feasible, and interrelate forest-related definitions, in particular biome-specific forest definitions, and definitions for the terms forest degradation and devegetation.
The meeting was attended by 52 participants, including, amongst others, representatives from the private sector.
FAO is currently engaged in the drafting of an analytical conceptual framework on core forest-related definitions, which will be further discussed by the Experts at the next meeting to be held in late August 2002.
FAO has continued to maintain close involvement in certification, both at the forest management level and in relation to trade. Many of its activities have directly or indirectly addressed some of these recommendations.
FAO has also participated in a number of meetings and working groups which have dealt with various aspects of certification. In these, it has presented its view that there is a need for improved cooperation between certification programmes. While it has not specifically endorsed mutual recognition, it has strongly supported efforts to achieve a greater degree of comparability and equivalency. It has indicated that efforts to achieve greater understanding, while allowing room for valid differences in approaches and requirements, such as through some form of recognition between schemes which are equivalent, is a desirable move. To us, the issue is not whether mutual recognition is a good idea - we believe it is. The important thing is to reach agreement on what are acceptable standards, and then to ensure that schemes that meet these standards and maintain them, are recognized as equivalent even though they may be different in some aspects. As has rightly been said, recognition should not be a means of lowering standards. If schemes are equivalent and are comparable, there should be a means of recognizing this.
FAO has acknowledged IFIR's work as a valuable step in encouraging greater comparability and equivalency, and the CEPI Comparative Matrix of Forest Certification Schemes as a useful source of information and means of evaluating different certification schemes. FAO would like to work with IFIR and others on the issue of acceptable standards and determining equivalency.
The Organization has also expressed the view that public attacks and negative publicity between certification processes that are occurring at present are against the interests of improving forest management.
Since FAO is not a funding, but an implementing agency, it has difficulties in providing financial support to, for example, various certification developments, as recommended.
Specific actions have included:
• Participation in a symposium held by the European Commission in Brussels (3-6 April 2001) on "Developing synergies between carbon sinks and sustainable development through forest certification". The symposium covered a potentially important subject - how to report and measure carbon storage activities, and whether the activities already under way in forest certification could or should be used to assist in this.
• Participation in a workshop in Brussels hosted by the European Commission (6-7 September 2001) which addressed the issue of "Forest certification: Forging novel incentives for environment and sustainable forest management".
• Discussions at the annual meeting of the United Nations European Commission for Europe (ECE) Timber Committee in Geneva (2-5 October 2001), where a special session covered certification issues. At this, the UN-ECE/FAO publication Forest products annual market review, 1999-2000 was also issued. This publication included a chapter titled Certified Forest Products Marketplace, covering markets for certified forest products in the ECE region. A report was also released on Forest Certification Update for the ECE Region - Summer 2001 (Geneva Timber and Forest Discussion Papers, UN ECE-FAO, ECE/TIM/DP/23).
• Participation in an FAO-FORSPA/APFRI/GTZ/Department of Forests and Wildlife of Cambodia Workshop on "Forest management certification and the design of local auditing systems", held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (4-6 December 2001) for countries from Indo-China. A paper titled Forest management certification and the design of local auditing systems was presented.
• Staff of FAO met representatives of the International Forest Industry Roundtable (IFIR) and discussed the IFIR programme and FAO's possible future role.
• FAO assisted the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) in the development and organization of an ITTO International Workshop on "Comparability and equivalence of forest certification schemes" held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (3-4 April 2002). At this meeting FAO supported the need to ensure comparability and equivalence between schemes and the efforts being made to achieve this.
As reported to the last Advisory Committee session, FAO commissioned a study on the environmental and energy balances of wood products and substitutes. The report has been prepared by the University of Hamburg and the Federal Research Centre for Forestry and Forest Products, also in Hamburg. It provides a scientific analysis of the environmental advantages of selected wood products compared with different substitutes, such as plastics, steel, concrete and aluminium. The approach taken is based on life-cycle assessments of each product.
One of the main objectives for producing this study was to provide a practical tool to raise awareness of policy-makers and the public sector in general about the environmental advantages of wood products against products derived from non-renewable raw materials.
The Committee's views would be welcome on this first attempt to promote the use of wood-based products and also suggestions on additional related activities that the Forestry Department of FAO should undertake in the short to medium term.