0376-A5
Bill Cafferata, Darlene Dahl and Stephen Hughes 1
The rise of certified forestry operations in British Columbia, Canada is a clear indication of growing marketplace-driven pressure for evidence of well-managed forests. Can certification provide that evidence on its own? Certification can improve forest management, but it should not be looked upon as a panacea, particularly in a public land ownership context.
In its paper to the XII World Forestry Congress, called The Role of an Independent Forestry Watchdog in an Era of Certification, British Columbia's Forest Practices Board explores how certification schemes fall short of providing that assurance, and how a public watchdog model can complete the picture.
The Board's paper discusses how certification cannot adequately address issues of independence, credibility, accountability and most importantly, stewardship of the broad forest resource owned by the public of British Columbia. It is also not designed to reflect the political foundation and cultural values the public has chosen for its forest management regime. Indeed, there is a risk that as trade becomes more globalized, so do values, and the ability of local authorities to manage for local values may suffer.
The strength of B.C.'s public watchdog model lies in its primary mandate, which is to serve the public's interest in its forestry asset. It is created by a democratically elected government and is free of political influence. It has a legal authority - and more importantly, obligation - to report to the public on forest practices. It is equally bound to identify which improvements are needed and seek action from those responsible.
Certification and independent public oversight can have similar goals for forest management, but they are structured to come at these goals from different angles. It is for this reason that they should be used concurrently to maximize the public trust in the practice of sound forest management.
The province of British Columbia (B.C.), on Canada's west coast, is home to some of the most extensive and ecologically important forestlands in the world. It is also home to a large and well-developed forest industry that operates primarily on publicly owned lands. Nearly 94 percent of British Columbia is owned by the people and administered by the provincial government.
As the theme of this conference indicates, we have a great challenge in finding ways to balance conflicting and growing demands of those who depend on the world's forests. British Columbia illustrates this challenge as well as anywhere in the industrialized world.
In 1995, out of a desire for consistent, enforceable and comprehensive forestry management regulations, the B.C. government created the Forest Practices Code of British Columbia Act, legislating forest management in the province. At the same time, the Forest Practices Board was created as an independent watchdog over the Code. One of the Board's main roles is to audit government and industry activities in the public forest for compliance with the Code and report what it finds to the citizens of B.C. In the seven years the Board has existed, we have yet to come across a similar model anywhere else in the world.
The Board looks with interest at the rise of a number of independent certification systems. The amount of forestry land being certified in BC is a clear indication of growing marketplace-driven pressure for industry to provide evidence of well-managed forests.2 We should welcome certification and independent third-party auditing as important tools in ensuring that forests are well managed. These do not, however, displace the need for an independent public watchdog.
Certification does not adequately address issues of independence, credibility, accountability and, most of all, stewardship of the broad forest resource owned by the public of B.C. Neither does it independently reflect the political foundation and cultural values the Board sees as prerequisites to improved-and continuously improving-forest practices. Indeed, there is risk that as trade becomes more globalized, so do values, and that the ability of local authorities to manage for local values could be diminished.
This paper will describe the Board's view on how an independent public watchdog can complement and work with certification systems to fulfill the goal of improved and continuously improving forest practices.
British Columbia's forest practices watchdog is an independent agency, funded by tax dollars, that audits and investigates the activities of industry and government on public forestlands. These actions include industrial forestry, ranching and clearing forests for mineral, oil and gas exploration and development. The Board also investigates complaints from the public, and has the legal mandate to launch appeals of certain government decisions and to investigate and report on forestry matters in the public's interest. Most importantly, the Board reports the results of its work directly to the people of B.C. and to the government, and can make recommendations for improving forest practices and their regulation in the province.
The legislation that created this model requires the Board to be independent of the political level of government in order to be effective, accountable and accessible to the public, and to carry on operations that are transparent. The appointed Board members represent a variety of interests, backgrounds and regions of the province. Staff and contractors, who are foresters, accountants, lawyers, biologists and geologists, perform the Board's work.
The Board's most compelling public purpose is external, independent validation of BC's forest practices to both domestic and foreign audiences. Its second compelling purpose is to serve as an independent "steam-valve" to deal with public complaints, helping to reduce conflicts in the forests. Overall, the Board serves to increase the public's and the market's confidence in the sound management of B.C.'s forests.
Environmental groups initially established certification systems to address issues of deforestation in tropical countries. The promotion of certification as a means to ensure sustainable forest practices was then taken to the major customers of forest products in the developed world, pressuring them to source only certified products. In recent years, the forest industry and governments have come on board and have developed alternate certification systems, primarily to maintain access to markets.
One of the ways certification systems establish credibility is by requiring independent audits by qualified auditors. The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) has established an independent board to oversee the SFI program to further enhance its credibility. However, at the end of the day, certification auditors are not directly accountable to the public who own the forest resource in B.C.
Certification is an important innovation in the management of forestry, but it is a new movement and is subject to market forces. If consumers fail to show an appreciable interest in using certified forest products, then the amount of forestland certified will inevitably fall. Likewise, if the marketplace becomes muddled with a multitude of competing certification schemes-or companies attempt to "greenwash" their products with meaningless labelling-then the movement becomes diluted and the public loses confidence that sound forest management is being practiced on their lands. A consistent, long-term approach towards achieving sustainability is needed, and certification systems have not yet had time to develop a history of good performance.
The public watchdog role serves to make industry and government accountable for how they manage and use the resource across the province. Unlike certification, which operators volunteer, Board audits are conducted randomly. Anyone operating on public forest lands can be chosen for audit at any time, including the government agencies responsible for enforcing the Code. The results of the audit will be published, regardless of the outcome. This approach serves to encourage all operators to ensure their practices fully comply with the Code and can withstand public scrutiny. It holds both the operators and government accountable for their adherence to, and enforcement of, the province's forest practices laws and regulations.
Certification programs are potentially significant vehicles for enhancing forest management practices but, because of their voluntary and private nature, they cannot provide the public with adequate assurances of sustainable management. The public of B.C. has a strong interest in the use of its forests, and any management process that is not open and transparent will not be accepted.
In addition to holding others accountable, the Board is accountable under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, ensuring its work is transparent, open and that the Board is accountable to the public it serves. The Board's audit process is open to the auditee, the government and the public. Its audit checklists represent a set audit procedure, designed to be replicable and reliable throughout the province.
Certification schemes may not be open to input from all stakeholders, let alone the public. Environmental critics assert that only Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification will properly represent the public interest, because economic interests dominate other certification schemes. Proponents of Canadian Standards Association (CSA) certification and SFI argue that their systems demand continuing involvement of the public, and are therefore inherently transparent. Transparency, clarity and consistency of application are the hallmarks of the Forest Practices Board model.
To satisfy the public, transparency must also be shown in the accreditation of certifiers and of the certification process. Independent third-party certifiers compete with one another, and may not provide open access to their certification process. Can the public rely on certification schemes to assure sound forest management when they do not necessarily have access to the manner and criteria against which their lands are being audited?
Because third-party certifiers guard their processes, the public may also not be able to assess the adequacy of an audit of the given operation. There has not yet been a mandated requirement for peer review of certification reports by any of the prominent certification schemes operating in the province. While B.C.'s watchdog model also has no mandated peer review requirement, it is subject to judicial review if a party feels badly served.
Sustainability connects economic and social welfare with the maintenance of ecological integrity and productivity. Achieving this integration requires democratic processes, in which people participate in designing effective strategies and work together to carry them out. Thus, the simple democratic premise that people should participate in making decisions about issues important to them and which may affect them lies at the heart of sustainability. Committee of Scientists Report.3
The determination of certification standards, and their application to a landbase that is a segment of a natural landscape unit, is not a process that can incorporate all of the objectives society will have for the land. This is particularly the case in B.C., where the land has spiritual, cultural, economic, recreational, habitat and ecosystem values that are unusually complex. In B.C., the Code has attempted to incorporate many of these public values.
About 90 B.C. communities rely on the forest industry for more than 50 percent of their economic base, while another 250 communities are classified as moderately forest-dependant.4 The province has traditionally managed forests with a view to regional employment expectations that may contraindicate meeting sustainability criteria established under a certification scheme.
Outsider influence is a sensitive subject for many communities, particularly rural and isolated communities that are resource dependent and eager to plot their own future. Some witnesses to a federal government review of forest management trade issues maintained that sustainable forest management was already being practiced in their community. They felt that imposing generic principles and criteria developed outside of the local experience and history was inappropriate.5
Stakeholder consultations are central to most certification schemes, but the extent to which the public can influence criteria and indicators in their local forests is debatable. Even regional standards can represent a distant market's version of sustainability. Certification prescriptions may comply with values that were determined for other forest tenure systems, other socio-economic situations or other bioregions.
If certification schemes provide another potential avenue for stakeholder input, they should be welcomed as conducive to the people's aims. But if they provide only an illusion of increased participation, or if they attempt to impose values that do not reflect the regional public's interest in the land, they do not further the community interest.
The public watchdog can and does examine forest practices on the basis of legal standards established through a democratic process. It also incorporates the diverse views of the domestic population through its make-up. It complements certification by ensuring public values are considered and addressed in adhering to the Forest Practices Code and in the stewardship of the public forest resource.
The forest industry is not the only operator in B.C.'s public forests. Unlike private lands that are managed for wood production, other resources are both harvested by, and managed for, multiple users. Government's stewardship also has profound effects on the ability to manage a land area sustainably. While certification can improve the actions of a forest operator in the areas under its control, it clearly cannot provide oversight and foster improvement in the overall stewardship of the public's forest assets.
Certification is a voluntary exercise dictated by markets. Not all operators will need to, or choose to, obtain certification. The result will be a patchwork of certified operations across the public forest. This may serve to satisfy customer needs, but does little to assure the public that overall management of the resources are aligned with public laws and expectations.
British Columbia's independent watchdog makes recommendations for improvement directed at forest operators, as well as government, that are based on the findings of audits and other work. These recommendations help government and operators avoid similar instances of Code violation or conflict. The goal of continuously improving practices will not be achieved unless audit results, as well as recommendations for improvement, are freely available to all managers and potential managers of forestlands. Everyone in B.C. can learn from the experience of operators on public forestlands, thereby fostering continuous improvement of forest practices.
The Board has noted a general improvement in the performance of licensees over seven years. What was once thought to be a unique or notable practice, such as leaving deciduous trees around non-fish bearing streams, is more commonplace now. There has been some real innovation in the way forestry is carried out, such as the introduction of variable retention or partial cut-cutblocks, and the move away from routine clearcutting. This has changed the forest landscape.
Certification schemes can only examine the land unit they have been commissioned to examine. This restriction may render them incapable of assessing forest practices over a natural landscape unit that is larger than the certified forest area. Issues such as biodiversity, habitat protection and community watersheds cannot be accurately audited on a small scale. In addition, only the auditor, the applicant and the certifying body generally know certification audit results. While individual operators will learn from these results, there is no mechanism to transfer that learning more broadly.
The independent watchdog model can also address land-use issues outside the realm of industrial timber harvesting and beyond the scope of certification. Crown land in B.C. is available to ranchers to use for grazing their cattle. This use falls under the jurisdiction of the province's forest practices regulations, but has no applicability to market-based timber harvesting certification schemes. Likewise, B.C.'s oil, gas and mining industries fell trees for seismic lines and to access their operations. These activities can have significant impacts on the public forest asset, but they are not governed by, or taken into account by, forest certification.
All certification schemes are market mechanisms. Certification is not a panacea for the complex issues that face forest managers in B.C. Broad values such as First Nations land entitlements or old-growth retention cannot be adequately incorporated in certification over a small harvest area. Admittedly, the independent watchdog model is also unable to address all of these issues. New and innovative approaches are needed and are being developed.
For example, the 2001 Joint Solutions Project in the Queen Charlotte, Central and North Coast forest regions of B.C., has brought together traditionally adversarial forest companies, environmental groups and First Nations groups. They seek joint solutions that fully integrate social, economic and ecological needs with conservation and management of globally significant coastal forests. These groups agree that independent certification is not the right tool for this objective.
Ultimately these initiatives must complement, but not duplicate, efforts to ensure that complex social, economic and environmental objectives are met in the stewardship of the public's forest asset.
The Forest Practices Board is currently undertaking its first audit on lands that have been independently audited under SFI, and we have established a process to allow us to rely on the work of the independent certification auditor. This has been done for two main reasons: 1) to reduce duplication of effort and impacts to the auditee; and 2) to reduce overall audit costs so we can carry out more audits.
The exercise has been very successful because the independent auditor and the licensee agreed to open the files on the certification audit and share all information freely. Our initial findings show that the development of an ISO management system combined with SFI certification has contributed to sound forest management practices. Because we incorporated the company's controls as part of our audit, our auditors have more comfort in the results than in other audits where the focus was solely on ground practices and did not consider controls. We also experienced a significant reduction in the time and cost because we did not have to conduct as much fieldwork as normally would have been required.
Another benefit to sharing audit results is that industry and certifiers are re-examining the audit process in light of the questions raised by Board auditors. This may lead to improvements in how future certification audits are conducted. The cycle of continuous improvement comes from sharing results and perspectives.
We anticipate this approach will serve to provide the public with the assurance it needs about overall stewardship of the land while providing some assessment of the certification audit itself. We expect that we can build confidence in the work of the independent auditors as well as the various certification systems at work in B.C. That will build on market-driven efforts to provide assurance to the owners of the public resource that it is being managed in accordance with public laws and expectations.
The strength of B.C.'s public watchdog model lies in its mandate of serving the public's interest in its forestry asset. It is created by a democratically elected government but is free of political influence. It has a legal authority-and more importantly, obligation-to report to the public on forest practices. It is equally bound to identify which improvements are needed and to seek action from those responsible.
Regardless of the merits of voluntary certification schemes, they are unlikely to function effectively in the absence of a regulatory framework established by an elected government that is representative of the public's expectations. This legislated stewardship role is equally important and applicable to industrial and developing nations.
Certification and independent public oversight can have similar goals for forest management, but the first is structured to gain access to markets for its product while the second is to steward a public resource. It is for this reason that they should be used concurrently to maximize the public trust in the practice of sound forest management.
Further information about the Forest Practices Board is available at http://www.fpb.gov.bc.ca/.
Canadian Standards Association, 2001. PLUS 1163 - Chain of Custody for Forest Products Originating from a Defined Forest Area Registered to CSA Standard CAN/CSA-Z809, 7 p.
Community Sustainability Auditing Project staff, 1999. Environmental Auditing and Certification in Forest-Dependent Communities: Review of Recent Developments, 9 p.
den Hertog, J., 2001. Certification - A View from Government (Powerpoint presentation), 27 slides.
Forest Practices Board of BC, 2000. A Review of the Forest Development Planning Process in British Columbia, 75 p.
Greer, D., Daryl Brown Associates Inc., 2001. Implementing Forest Certification in British Columbia: Issues and Options, 124 p.
Hoberg, Dr. G., 2002. Report of Consultations on a Results-Based Forest and Range Practices Regime for British Columbia, 12 p.
Mele, M. 2002. Forest Certification: A "Green" Light for Harvesting?, 6 p.
Nussbaum, R., Jennings, S. Garforth, M., 2002. Assessing Forest Certification Schemes: A Practical Guide, 60 p.
Ozinga, S., 2001. Behind the Logo: An Environmental and Social Assessment of Forest Certification Schemes, 60 p.
Simula, M., 1996. International and Institutional Arrangements for Certification of Forest Management and Eco-labelling of Forest Products, 26 p.
Vallejo, N., 1996. Potential Economic, Social and Environmental Impacts of Certification, 17 p.
Volpe, J., 2002. Forest Management Practices in Canada as an International Trade Issue, 14 p.
Wilkinson, G. 1999. Codes of Forest Practice as Regulatory Tools for Sustainable Forest Management, 22 p.
Working Group on Criteria and Indicators for the Conservation and Sustainable Management of Temperate and Boreal Forests, 2001. Scaling National Criteria and Indicators to the Local Level, 36 p.
1 Chair of the Forest Practices Board, P.O. Box 9905, Stn. Prov. Gov't Victoria, British Columbia, Canada V8W 9R1. [email protected]; Website: www.fpb.gov.bc.ca
2 As of Sept. 2002, over 44 million hectares of land has been certified in B.C., including 4.7 million hectares under CSA, 5.1 million under SFI and 89,000 hectares under FSC. The remainder is ISO certified, though not exclusively.
3 Committee of Scientists, March 15, 1999, U.S. Department of Agriculture Washington, D.C., Sustaining the People's Lands, Recommendations for Stewardship of the National Forests and Grasslands into the Next Century, pg.131
4 Canadian Council of Forest Ministers. National Status 2000: Criteria and Indicators of Sustainable Forest Management in Canada, "pg. 111
5 John Volpe et al. Forest Management Practices in Canada as an International Trade Issue, pg 6