Session 5 - "Current Status and Experience of
Co-operation and Efforts towards Mutual Recognition"

Background Paper by

Ben Gunneberg, PEFC Council Secretary General

The Third Pan European Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe (MCI`FE), held in Lisbon 1998, declared its commitment to endorsing the voluntary pan -European operational level guidelines for sustainable forest management, which had been previously adopted by an expert level preparatory meeting. The Guidelines form a common framework of recommendations that can be used on a voluntary basis and as a complement to national and or regional instruments to further promote sustainable forest management at the field level, on forest areas in Europe Potential uses of the guidelines as stated by the ministers includes its use as an indicative reference for the establishment of standards for forest certification schemes. It is important to note that hundreds of experts from a very wide range of stakeholder groups have been involved in the development of this political process and that it is an ongoing process. Many countries developing their national schemes respect this allinclusive political process, which continues to evolve, and forms the basis of the mutual recognition process known as the PEFC scheme.

It summary, it works like this:

Each country develops its own national (or regional) independent forest certification standard and scheme based on the Guidelines, the national laws and regulations and the core ILO conventions as well as the ones ratified by the country in question. All relevant interested parties are invited to participate in this process. The process then develops national and/or regional performance standards based on this reference basis. If the scheme wants to participate in the PEFC Council, then some additional requirements are required such as a cyclical process of transparency in the preparation and revision of the documentation, an objective for reaching consensus, periodic review, a consultation process and following the principle of continuous improvement. PEFC also relies on the credible implementation of a scheme by following normal internationally recognised certification processes i.e. the use of independent certifiers accredited by national accreditation organisations. These are, of course completely independent of PEFC and the scheme owners and have to follow the strict rules required by their processes to maintain the credibility and quality of their work.

Once a scheme has been developed, it is ready for assessment through the mutual recognition framework developed by PEFC with guidance and advise of national accreditation organisations to ensure transparency and maximum participation possibilities by all at various stages in the process. Annex 5 of the PEFC Technical Document contains further details of the process (copies available on www.pefc.org). The process includes a public consultation period with the assessment of schemes being undertaken by independent well-respected experts. They assess whether the scheme meets the guidelines and also the requirements of PEFC Council. Based on this independent assessment, all

members are in a position to participate in an informed vote on whether they mutually recognise the applicant scheme or not. Based on this independent assessment and their own experiences, member forums and their stakeholders can discuss the applicant scheme at a local level before submitting their final votes on whether to accept the scheme or not. In other words in addition to an objective independent analysis, this mutual recognition process also provides for the ultimate decisions to be made by the national forums and their stakeholders. This is an example of bottom up democracy, which you find in other institutions such as the United Nations and the European union

Experiences and actions

The PEFC Council was formed only 14 months ago. To date five national schemes have been through the assessment process namely:

· Austrian Forest Certification Scheme

· German Forest Certification Scheme

· Finnish Forest Certification Scheme

· Norwegian Living Forest Standards and Certification Scheme

· Swedish PEFC Forest Certification Scheme

These schemes currently account for 32.47 million hectares of certified forests and in the case of Finland alone, volumes ofjust over 7 million tonnes processed products per year will be available to customers from certified sources. PEFC is already going a long way towards meeting the increasing demand for products from certified forests.

Schemes for which a public consultation has just begun:

· Czech Forest Certification Scheme

· French Forest Certification Scheme

These schemes, if approved, are likely to be applied to 17 million hectares in the next 5 years.

Schemes for which tenders are expected shortly:

· Latvian Forest Certification Scheme

Schemes, which have indicated they will submit an application in this year:

· Belgian Forest Certification scheme

· CSA International SFM standards

· Portuguese Forest Certification Scheme

· Spanish Forest Certification Scheme

· Swiss Q label Holz Scheme

The processes for mutual recognition have been summarised above but a more details can be obtained by referring to the PEFC Technical Document and associated Annexes (www.pefc.ora)

Most schemes apply the generic chain of custody as outlined in Annex 6 of the Technical document, but some have submitted national ones as part of their application. Some national chain of custodies are

expected to be submitted separately and PEK has commissioned a consultant to look into options for considering these and chain of custodies form other processes.

In addition, the success of the PEFC process has resulted in increased interest from certification schemes outwith the MCPFE area. These are many schemes based on other political processes, which grew out of Rio. The framework uses the MCPRE as a basis, but it could be adapted to accommodate other political processes. It is for that reason that PEFC has started discussions with CSA concerning the Montreal process. Although the CSA scheme is likely to be assessed against the MCPFE criteria, indicators and operational level guidelines, a separate study will be undertaken to compare the two political processes to augment the various studies already undertaken in this area. After its recent general assembly, the chairman of PEFC Mr Plauche Gillon presented some of the Boards thinking on this matter to stimulate reflection and debate. This comprised several models including one in which there could be separate geographical colleges based on the political processes, which could operate like PEFC and over which there would then be a council of all member states to facilitate the peer reviewed mutual recognition, again based on independent assessment by external expert consultants. There would of course need to be an assessment of the substantive equivalence of the various processes and the principles of equivalence, subsidiarity of the developmentprocess of national schemes and networking between and within the colleges. Stakeholders would again be involved from the grass roots upwards and similar to other processes, an observer status could be given to international organisations. Other options include the expansion of the current structure, although new applicants might not feel comfortable with this in the short to medium term, due to the predominance of European schemes at the moment. These issues are being discussed.

Other actions outside the PEFC process include of course the first global mutual recognition technical workshop for scheme owners and experts, which took place in Brussels last June with the aid of the European Commission. The proceedings for that seminar formed one of the background papers for this event.

PEFC has also taken part in the IFIR process the results of which will also be presented today. At national level, various scheme owners have been in exploratory talks with other scheme owners, notably in Sweden and I understand that this process is ongoing.

Issues PEFC feels are important to working with other certification processes

1)

Recognition that each country has the right to develop its national or regional certification schemes based on the political processes for the promotion of sustainable forest management signed up to by that country

2) Certification against any scheme from any process should be done by certification organisations accredited by nationalaccreditation bodies and provided the schemes have been mutually recognised, have access to international labels if so desired

3) The principle of subsidiarity should be respected in the development of national or regional standards and certification schemes. This is to ensure an effective bottom up approach respecting cultural and structural differences in each country.

4) A variety of certification unit options must be available, including regional certification to ensure non-discrimination.

5) Mutual recognition frameworks must be based on democratic principles ensuring that scheme owners and their stakeholders at national level are appropriately represented at international level. International organisations and institutions would be expected to work at grass roots level but will also be able to influence developments in a non-voting capacity at international level.

6)

There needs to be substantive equivalence between certification schemes and this will need to be ensured through developing schemes using internationally recognised indicators, criteria and operational level guidelines as abasis for the development of schemes, and following a transparent independent assessment procedure which will inform the decision making process of all members.

7) Any label provider must be totally independent of accreditation and certification procedures to avoid any risk of undue influence in this multi stakeholder process called mutual recognition.

8) Finally, stakeholder supporters from all schemes must refrain from tribal warfare, as only our forests can be the ultimate looser. We all have a common aim - the promotion of sustainable forest management, so lets work together to achieve it.

In summary:

The PEFC Mutual Recognition process respects and adheres to the political processes designed to promote sustainable forest management developed by multi stakeholder involvement.

The PEFC mutual recognition process operates as a bottom up process, respecting the principles of subsidiarity, which are largely responsible for its success in delivering rapidly growing quantities of timber from certified forests to the market place within a very short time frame.

PEFC relies on the use of normal certification and accreditation processes (which are completely independent of PEFC) and which have their own rigorous procedures to ensure the reliability, independence and credibility of their work.

PEFC's success in providing a framework for mutual recognition for independent national schemes developed on the "MCPRE" process has drawn the attention of other national schemes built on similar political processes elsewhere in the world. PEFC is therefore actively looking at developing a methodology, which will facilitate the mutual recognition of schemes developed on other political processes. This work is ongoing.

The independence of each scheme from PEFC is its strength. Member schemes can at anytime leave the mutual recognition framework provided by the PEFC Council. If they leave, they have the advantage of still having an independent national scheme which has certifiers accredited by the national accreditation organisations. In other words they remain fully operational, which would not be the case if PEFC were to provide the accreditation for the certification bodies for example. This independence is a strength as it brings with it responsibilities for all stakeholders to be actively involved in the ongoing development of PEFC to ensure the success of the framework. It ensures an ongoing bottom up consensus approach that a top down approach would have difficulties in emulating.

PEFC has already taken five national independent forest certification schemes through its process and three further schemes are in the pipeline. It is expected that twelve schemes in total will have completed the process by the end of 2001. To date 32.47 million hectares have been certified through the five schemes endorsed by PEFC and this figure is expected to rise well above 40 million by the end of the year. The member schemes of PEFC can and will deliver the volumes of certified product demanded by the market place. The PEFC Council has been operational for just over one and a half years.

Ben Gunneberg