“Will we pass the ultimate test of time?”

19 November 2014 News

"Your Excellency’s, invited guests, members, and stakeholders, it is always a joyous occasion for me to have our General Assembly in Paris. It is joyful since, as you know, we were founded in Paris and thus Paris is our home and coming home is always a joyful event."

For me personally it is also joyful since it was at our 10th anniversary held in Paris that the delegates to that General Assembly bestowed upon me the honor and the obligation of the Chairmanship of PEFC Council," said William Street Jr., PEFC Chairman, at the PEFC General Assembly today.

"This talk of our history tends to put me in a mood to reminisce and to reflect on where we have been and what might lie ahead. Whenever I reflect on the past I always seek to understand how history will judge us. Will we pass the ultimate test of all human endeavors; will we pass the test of time?"

"In less than two decades, a proverbial drop in the bucket of history, PEFC has gone from an organization of 11 national certification systems to 38 member countries and growing. Today, two thirds of all certified forests globally are certified to PEFC. More than half of all the world’s traded sustainable forest products are sourced from PEFC forests. This makes PEFC the world’s leading forest certification system and the world’s largest source of eco-certified forest products."

"When elected Chair in Paris five years ago, I issued a challenge to all of PEFC. That challenge was to succeed in the Global South where prior to that time forest certification was struggling. I also stated that if we failed in Asia and if we failed in Africa and succeeded everywhere else in the world, we would have failed in our mission to save the world’s forests and the people that depend upon them."

"In just two years, PEFC has welcomed China, Indonesia, and Japan into membership and has endorsed national certification systems in China and Indonesia. Likewise, Russia has added an additional 2 million hectares of certified forest this year alone. In Africa, we also continue to make progress and are pleased to announce today the re-endorsement of the Gabonese Forest Certification scheme."

"All this means that PEFC continues to meet the needs of both forest owners and consumers to provide the world with carbon sequestering forest products, sourced from sustainably managed forests from every continent of the world."

"How and why has PEFC been so successful? Aside from the obvious, which is the skill, dedication, and hard work of our members, I think keys to our success have been our nationally based structure and the recognition from the start that we need an integrated approach covering all three pillars of sustainable forest management. Our founders were committed to the idea that every forest must meet all of its obligations: to provide economic advantage to the owner, social gain for the community, and environmental benefits for society."

"Our structure can best be described by quoting the French author Alexander Dumas. His motto of: “One for all and all for one” captures the spirit of PEFC. Each national forest certification system must create, through an exhaustive stakeholder consultation process, a plan as to how they are going to achieve PEFC's Sustainability Benchmarks within their national context and for their specific forest vegetation type. PEFC International does not dictate to these countries how they are to save their forests, maintain a viable forest economy, or protect and support their forest dependent populations. Each country must determine how to do that. This generates a broad consensus among our members and stakeholders, which increasingly consumers of wood products are recognizing as value added. PEFC France is a prime example of how bringing together family forestland owners, forest products supply chain participants, and large retailers can generate superior results."

"The foundations of our standards remain the various international protocols and international agreements and regulations. We update these every five years to reflect the latest science and best practice, but also to ensure an ongoing dialogue among stakeholders. Ongoing dialogue is a fundamental ingredient for long-term success as it ensures that ownership of national standard remains with the stakeholders at local level, in alignment with a globally accepted framework for what sustainable forest management must achieve."

"One issue area experiencing rapid change is the entire global debate on climate change and how to respond. Last week the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their 5th report on the state of the world’s climate. The most notable change since their first report issued in 2007, is the word, “irreversible”. In the first report the word “irreversible” appeared four times. In the current report the word appears 31 times. Clearly, the world's scientists are telling us that we must act with a sense of urgency. Sustainable forest management is a key to tackling climate change, and PEFC is now developing a carbon module to assist forest landowners and managers be more proactive in this arena and to make the benefits that forests offer more visible."

"What has not changed in the climate change debate is the notion characterized by Sir Nicholas Stearns, who stated in 2006 that, “the problem of climate change involves the fundamental failure of markets: those who damage others by emitting greenhouse gases generally do not pay.”

"Obviously, PEFC, a voluntary alliance of those interested in saving forests through sustainable forest management do not have the capacity to solve this problem. But we can be and are part of the solution. By extending forest certification into developing countries of the Global South, we are helping overcome market and trade barriers that they face. Our focus on local ownership and extensive local stakeholder involvement transfers skills and education to forest owners around the world. Our recognition that forest land must provide an economic use value if forests land use is to remain a viable option makes us unique among certification systems. Our understanding that the three pillars of sustainability- economic, social, and environmental - must progress together at roughly equal pace makes PEFC the only logical choice for those seeking to save forest, and the people who depend on them."

"There is another market failure that drives deforestation and thus, threatens the planet. It has been analyzed by the French economist, Thomas Piketty in his award winning and bestselling book, "Capital in the 21st Century". In his book he explores the questions of markets and inequality. One key point is that it requires excellent public policy to have markets generate equity outcomes. As long as inequity is the status quo of business as usual, substantial portions of the population of forest dependent peoples, among others, will face poverty. Poverty results in deforestation and the unsustainable use of forest resources."

"Thus we see a convergence of deforestation driven by poverty, and neo liberal driven public policy that fails to address the issues of global poverty and global greenhouse gas emissions. When these forces are combined, the result is multiple market failures all of which endanger forests and those who depend on them."

"We are all in this together. One for all and all for one. PEFC in its own small way has become a driver for strong social outcomes in our certification systems. We are the only certification system that requires adherence to the ILO core labor standards and the ILO Convention on Indigenous Peoples. In countries who have not adopted the conventions, or fail to enforce them, our national certification systems are required to have appropriate requirements in place to make sure that workers in certified forests are protected. That is why the Malaysian, US, and Chinese systems all have special provisions regarding workers’ rights."

"We recognize that indigenous peoples are both the victims of much misguided public policy and market decisions, and that they also hold many solutions for sustainable forest management. We know that small forest landowners must have a reasonable expectation that their investments in their own private forests will generate a fair and equitable return for their families and their communities."

"There are some who see the efforts of PEFC to protect, support, and expand small forest landowners akin to those of Don Quixote. They think we are tilting at windmills. On the contrary, the history of sustainable forest management is that small and communal forest landowners have been the ones most willing to make the sacrifices required to protect forests. Efforts in France and Germany can be traced back 300 years and in Japan forest protections efforts can be traced back to the 1600's."

"A German philosopher noted that history can only be fully understood after a certain period of time has passed. We will never know if our decisions to save forests through an integrated sustainable forest management approach targeted to small family forest landowners will pass the test of time. But it seems clear so far that we are on the right side of history: we are based on local control, we have a system where the parties trust each other, and we follow all of the international protocols for standard setting organizations. When the history of our period and our actions are written, I have a high degree of confidence that the actions of our members will be acknowledged as being part of the solution. And I sincerely hope that those empowered to make global public policy decisions effecting forests do not wait for history to validate our efforts and that these global policy makers recognize our contributions today by involving us in the decision-making process more in the future than they have done in the past."