Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes

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Logo of the PEFC
Information sign on the Harzhorn / Lower Saxony
PEFC sign next to the Elisabeth fountain near Marburg-Schröck

The Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes ( PEFC , German  a program for the recognition of forest certification systems ) is an international forest certification system. According to its own information, it is the world's largest independent organization for ensuring and continuously improving sustainable forest management , which is supposed to guarantee ecological, social and economic standards. There are award standards and certification organizations in 53 countries. The PEFC Council (PEFC International) based in Geneva is superordinate to these .

Naming

After the accession of non-European members in 2002, the original name Pan European Forest Certification was changed at the seventh general assembly of the PEFC in October 2003 to Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes (program for the recognition of forest certification systems).

In terms of content, PEFC is based on the agreements established by the European Ministerial Conferences for the Protection of Forests in Europe and was founded towards the end of the 1990s, primarily on the basis of the initiative of representatives of the forestry and timber industry such as the German Forestry Council . Various environmental organizations, social associations, the timber industry and other associations participate in PEFC. They are free to work and should continue to be made possible by interest groups not previously involved.

Forest certification

325 million hectares of forest are currently PEFC certified worldwide. In Germany, with 7.6 million hectares, it is two thirds of the domestic forest. In Austria, around 2.7 million hectares, two thirds of the total forest area is certified.

PEFC standards

The foundation is a catalog of criteria, which is part of the technical document of the PEFC Council International (PEFCC) and in which the basic requirements and standards are specified that are required by all national forest certification systems, such as B. PEFC Germany, must be met. These standards include:

  • the protection of ecologically particularly valuable forest areas,
  • the ban on the use of genetically modified organisms,
  • compliance with the fundamental ILO core labor standards,
  • ensuring protective measures for people working in the forest,
  • consideration of the rights of indigenous peoples.

In addition, there are other rules in Germany that forest owners must adhere to in order to receive the PEFC seal. According to the German PEFC standard:

  • Mixed stands of tree species appropriate to the location are to be maintained or built up,
  • Clear cuts are generally prohibited
  • an adequate supply of deadwood is to be maintained,
  • When using machines, the floor must be particularly protected
  • the use of pesticides is to be avoided (expert opinion required),
  • Special consideration must be given to the protected biotopes and protected areas as well as the endangered animal and plant species.

At the beginning of 2005, a revised version of the standards for Germany came into force. The changes took into account the developments within the MCPFE and also the findings that had emerged from inspections of the certified companies (this made it clear that driving on the existing area was one of the most frequent disregards of the regulations). The innovations are primarily expressed in six guidelines, which are intended to make it easier for companies to implement the standards (e.g. on deadwood management). Some emergency situations such as precautions in the event of an oil spill are also taken into account. In the current version of the PEFC standards from 2014, additional criteria for the protection of forests and the people who work in them were included. According to this, only those service and contractors as well as commercial self-recruiters who have the appropriate qualifications and a certificate recognized by PEFC Germany (e.g. the RAL quality mark ) may be used in forest work . For their own protection, private self-recruiters must prove that they have attended a qualified chain saw course . To protect water and soil, only rapidly biodegradable chain oils and hydraulic fluids may be used during forest work. The German PEFC standards have been undergoing a further revision since June 2019, which is expected to be completed in 2021.

Certification process

In Germany, the PEFC system is structured as follows: There is regional certification . On the basis of a regional forest report, which records all relevant data on the forests in a federal state and allows the development to be monitored every five years, forest owners can undertake to comply with the PEFC standards. Every year, a representative number of the participating forest companies are audited by independent certifiers (in 2017, 47.2% of the PEFC-certified area was checked using random samples). If violations are found, the forest owner threatens to be excluded from the PEFC system. After the exclusion, the forest owner is no longer allowed to sell his wood as PEFC-certified.

Due to the regional approach, PEFC should be cost-effective and particularly suitable for family forest holdings typical in Europe. Other countries, whose respective system must be recognized by the international PEFC umbrella organization, but which do not have the small-parceled ownership structures, also use group or individual certification. The PEFC Council, to which national representations in 35 countries on five continents belong, was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Geneva . 53 national PEFC bodies are members of the PEFC Council. By January 2020, 44 national certification systems had successfully passed the PEFC recognition process.

Chain of custody certification

The PEFC system has developed a chain of custody certification for the flow of wood from the forest to the consumer. There are two options: Either physical separation or input-output accounting. The PEFC logo may only appear on a product if at least 70% of the wood it contains is PEFC certified. For non-PEFC-certified material that is processed in labeled products, it must be proven that it does not come from controversial wood sources such as illegal logging. Certification is based on the third party auditing principle. This means that the testing institutes must be independent of the manufacturer.

Accreditation of Certifiers

At PEFC, the setting of standards, the certification and the accreditation of the certifier are separate from each other. Compliance with the PEFC standards is checked by independent certifiers (such as TÜV) who are approved and monitored by the DAkkS accreditation body in Berlin. In doing so, they follow the internationally valid ISO standards.

criticism

Criticism of the PEFC comes mainly from non-governmental organizations in the environmental sector, such as B. Robin Wood practiced. The following points are criticized:

  • Regional certification, which means that individual companies are not necessarily checked for compliance with the criteria.
  • Preliminary controls would not be carried out, only later random samples would be initiated. That makes the system cheaper, but not better.
  • The standards are not "performance-based" (they are formulated in such a way that forest companies have a relatively wide scope for interpretation when implementing the standards and thus no forest owner has to change their management practice).

The forest policy background of the debates about certification schemes such as PEFC is relevant when assessing the criticism from forest policy actors such as Robin Wood. In critical discussions, comparisons are made in particular to the first global certification system Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which was founded (at that time with the primary goal of protecting and sustainably using tropical rainforests) on the initiative of the major international environmental NGOs Greenpeace and WWF as part of the UNCED was decided. The decision to create an alternative certification scheme is to be understood as a reaction to the founding of the FSC, as the majority of small private forest companies considered the conception of the FSC to be too bureaucratic and therefore unnecessarily cost-intensive, and also felt that they were severely underrepresented in the decision-making bodies (the forest - and the wood sector as a whole has a voting weight of a third there). Furthermore, Central European forest operations are assumed to be unsustainable a priori (see second point of criticism). An abbreviated presentation of the critical debates shows that the forestry, wood and paper industries position themselves for the PEFC, while the environmental associations argue against it.

However, criticism is also voiced by independent organizations. In 2002, Öko-Test only rated PEFC as “sufficient”, while FSC and Naturland were rated “very good”. In its 2012 environmental report, the German Advisory Council on Environmental Issues compares the PEFC with the FSC and describes it as significantly weaker; it does not count it among the “high-quality ecological standards”.

recognition

The PEFC and FSC seals are equally recognized by many international and national institutions and companies. In the federal procurement guideline of January 1, 2011, it says: “Wood products that are procured by the federal administration must be proven to come from legal and sustainable forest management. Evidence must be provided by the bidder by submitting a certificate from FSC, PEFC, a comparable certificate or individual evidence ". The label-online portal of the consumer initiative rated the seal as “recommendable”.

The EU also recognizes PEFC. In a resolution of the EU Parliament of January 16, 2006 it says: "The EU Parliament regards the certification systems of FSC and PEFC as equally suitable [...] to give consumers security with regard to sustainable forest management". PEFC-certified wood and wood products also meet all the criteria of the Dutch procurement agency TPAC (Dutch Timper Procurement Assessment Committee) and the British Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs In an international study by the consulting company for international trade ITS Global in 2011, the PEFC was better rated as FSC.

See also

Web links

Commons : Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b What is PEFC? PEFC, accessed February 7, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Contact us. PEFC, accessed February 7, 2020 .
  3. ^ News, General Assembly Special Issue. PEFC, November 17, 2003, accessed July 10, 2008 .
  4. ↑ https://pefc.org/
  5. ↑ Home. PEFC, accessed February 7, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Sustainable Forest Management - Requirements PEFC ST 1003: 2018. PEFC, 2018, accessed February 4, 2020 .
  7. ↑ PEFC standards for sustainable forest management NORMATIVE DOCUMENT PEFC D 1002-1: 2014. PEFC, 2014, accessed February 4, 2020 .
  8. ↑ PEFC standards for sustainable forest management NORMATIVE DOCUMENT PEFC D 1002-1: 2014n. PEFC, 2014, accessed February 4, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Start of the fourth standard revision. Verpackungswirtschaft.de, July 5, 2019, accessed on February 4, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Annual Report 2017. PEFC, January 2017, accessed February 4, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Everything You Should Know About PEFC. PEFC, January 2020, accessed February 4, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Wood certification: PEFC Austria celebrates its 10th anniversary. (No longer available online.) In: aiz.info. June 19, 2009, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved January 21, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.netzwerk-land.at
  13. ↑ Robin Wood: Die Öko-Kontras and the confused angel , magazine 4/2003 ( Memento of the original from May 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.robinwood.de
  14. ↑ On the wrong track? In: Öko-Test , November 11, 2002.
  15. ^ Expert Council for Environmental Issues (Ed.): Environmental Report 2012 - Responsibility in a Limited World . June 4, 2012, p. 369-370 ( download page ).
  16. ↑ Joint decree on the procurement of wood products. BMEL, January 17, 2011, accessed on February 4, 2020 .
  17. ↑ PEFC. In: Label Online. Retrieved February 7, 2020 .
  18. ^ Official Journal, Volume 62. European Union, January 17, 2019, accessed February 4, 2020 .
  19. ↑ Summary Report of the Final Judgment of PEFC International. Timber Procurement Assessment Committee (TPAC), June 11, 2010, accessed February 4, 2020 .
  20. ↑ CPET Update Gives Forest Certification Schemes Top Score. PEFC, November 2, 2015, accessed February 4, 2020 .
  21. ↑ Forest Certification â ???? Sustainability, Governance and Risk. ITS Global, January 2011, accessed February 4, 2020 .