No abstract

Over the last 25 years, the global area of certified forests has grown rapidly and voluntary forest certification has become recognized as an effective tool to engage international markets in improving sustainability within forest management units. However, the bulk of this growth has occurred in North America, Northern Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, with relatively limited uptake in the tropics. Since its creation, forest certification has been largely understood as a “market-based” mechanism, in contrast to government-led policies and regulations. Through the experience of the Responsible Asia Forestry and Trade (RAFT) partnership in the Asia Pacific region, we find that the framing of forest certification as voluntary and market-based, and as a mechanism to overcome governance failure, has created an artificial dichotomy. In this dichotomy, voluntary certification and regulatory measures to promote sustainable forest management are conceived of and pursued largely independently. We argue that it is more constructive to view them as complementary approaches that share a common goal of increasing sustainability across the forestry sector. In practice, forest certification interacts with conventional governance institutions and mechanisms. Understanding these interactions and their implications, as well as additional possibilities for interaction, will help in realizing the full potential of forest certification.

As demand for commodities increases globally, resource-rich countries are focal areas for industrial expansion. The extractives sector is driving unprecedented growth of infrastructure (e.g., roads, railways and pipelines) into sparsely populated regions, which contain some of the world’s remaining intact forests. Yet, the extent of the threat posed by an increased footprint of extractive industries is not well understood. Here we provide a novel global assessment of the potential threat posed to tropical Intact Forest Landscapes (IFLs), continuous patches of forest that have no remotely sensed signs of human activity or forest fragmentation, from the extractives sector including mining, oil and gas projects, using one of the most extensive global spatial datasets on extractives concessions to date. We found ∼20% of the global tropical IFL estate is designated as extractive’s concessions, presenting an enormous threat to these forests. Oil and gas concessions overlap with 408,000 km2 of tropical IFLs (7.85% of total IFL area), with the biggest overlap in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Papua New Guinea. Mining concessions overlap with 589,000 km2 (11.33%) of tropical IFL area, mainly in Brazil and Democratic Republic of Congo. As the majority of concessions overlapping IFLs are currently at the exploration stages for all types of extractives, now is the time to plan for reducing the potential threat through strategies such as identifying “no go” areas and applying the mitigation hierarchy. Nations and investors should undertake regional strategic environmental assessments to reduce impacts, including potential indirect and cumulative impacts of multiple projects and other threats in the landscape. We also call for banks that funders of extractives projects to apply global best practice industry environmental safeguards that recognize the value of intact forests and the risk of cumulative impacts to these unique sites.

The forest landscapes of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) are changing dramatically, with a multitude of impacts from local to global levels. These changes invariably have their foundations in forest governance. The aim of this paper is to assess perceptions of key stakeholders regarding the state of forest governance in the countries of the GMS. The work is based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the perceptions of forest governance in the five GMS countries, involving 762 representatives from government, civil society, news media, and rural communities. The work identified many challenges to good forest governance in the countries in the region, as well as noting reasons for optimism. Generally speaking, there was a feeling that the policies, legislation, and institutional frameworks were supportive, but there are numerous challenges in terms of implementation, enforcement, and compliance. The work also presents a program of activities recommended by the research participants to address governance challenges and opportunities in the GMS countries. These include the development of a forest governance monitoring system, and initiatives that support informed decision-making by forest product consumers in the region as well as the implementation of a capacity development program for non-state actors (e.g., civil society, news media) to ensure they are more able to support the diverse, and often demanding, forest governance initiatives.

Created as a market-based instrument to deter tropical deforestation, the certification program of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has experienced tremendous growth over the past two decades. We argue that using a comprehensive conceptual framework is needed to assess the successes and limitations of FSC certification. We introduce a supply chain strategy framework to address three questions: (a) What are the requisite supply chain conditions for certification programs to be successful? (b) How well does the tropical timber sector meet these conditions? (c) What actions could make FSC certification efforts more effective? We conclude that some conditions necessary for a successful supply chain strategy are not found in the tropical timber industry. As a result, FSC certification faces severe limitations as a governance tool for tropical forest conservation. We suggest that a collaborative approach to creating markets for certified timber will improve FSC certificate program effectiveness.