European Body Sets New Forest Certification Scheme
11/5/99
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Title: European Body Sets New Forest Certification Scheme
Source: Reuters News Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: November 5, 1999
HELSINKI- The Pan European Certification Council said on Friday it
had set up a framework for mutual recognition of national forest
certification schemes, in an attempt to reassure environmentally-
conscious consumers and boost trade.
The council, a body of European forest owners and the forest
industry, said after a meeting in Prague it would soon be able to
accept applications from national forest certification schemes for
endorsement, and that 15 European countries and several industry
bodies had backed the system.
``Interest in the PEFC (Pan European Forest Certification Scheme)
process has been expressed by other timber producers from as far
afield as Australia, the United States and Brazil,'' the council said
in a statement.
One goal of forest certification is to reassure increasingly
environmentally-conscious consumers that the forest products they buy
come from sustainably managed forests.
The organisation's PEFC will rival the Forest Stewardship Council's
(FSC) certification programme, and a Finnish industry official said
it would soon overtake the FSC in the amount of forests certified.
Pekka Kallio-Mannila, of the Finnish Forest Industries Federation,
told Reuters that with Finland and Sweden set to join, there would be
about 20 million hectares of PEFC-certified forestland within a year,
versus about 17 million covered by the FSC system.
Products from PEFC-certified forests will bear a logo indicating they
come from sustainably managed forests that have been subject to
independent third-party auditing, which should facilitate cross-
border trade, the Council said.