- Forest Day and the global perspective on forests and climate change
- Counting carbon to make carbon count
- REDD+: Location, location, location …
- Coping with climate change in Costa Rica
- Transforming tenure in Guatemala
- There’s more to conservation than wildlife
- Indonesia’s lessons for REDD+
- Cameroon’s foresters align rules with reality
- Setting the standards for small-scale forestry
Setting the standards for small-scale forestry
Some 117 millions hectares of the world’s forests, 15 per cent of them tropical forests, are currently certified as sustainably managed by organisations like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). However, companies, communities and individuals managing small blocks of forest, or exploiting forests at low intensity, have found it hard to join certification schemes. This is set to change.
A research project funded by the Global Environment Facility and managed by CIFOR has devised tools and incentives that will enable forest managers and local communities to identify and manage biodiversity on small-scale forestry operations, or where the intensity of management is low. The research tested these tools and incentives at 6 sites in Brazil, Cameroon and Mexico.
New standards for small-scale and low-intensity operations were submitted for approval to the Council in late 2009. Frank Katto, who manages the accreditation programme, said they would make a significant difference. ‘The standards will reduce many of the barriers which prevented small operators from joining certification schemes in the past,’ he says. ‘They are relatively simple to use, and less costly than the standards they replace, without reducing any of the rigour required by FSC certification.’
The project enabled CIFOR to have an impact both locally and globally and to build on previous research findings. ‘It was a good example of collaboration between a research centre, a global forest certification organisation and various national initiatives,’ says CIFOR scientist Robert Nasi.