Assessment of forest industries compliance to forest certification standards in northwestern Russia

Abstract

Russian boreal forests (taiga) cover an area of over 800 million hectares, which accounts for 20 % of the global forest resource and 47 % of the total territory of the Russian Federation. Russian forests are faced with several pressing environmental, institutional, and economic challenges of which illegal logging is a major concern. Forest Certification (FC) is a voluntary, market-driven mechanism involving a third-party auditing service ("the certifier") where the quality of forest management and production practices are systematically assessed against a set of specific requirements ("standards") with the aim of informing end-users of the sustainability of the forests from which the wood originated. Currently, Russia has approximately 43 million hectares of forests under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification scheme, and the FSC has granted 235 forest management (FM) certificates and 796 chain of custody (COC) certificates. National and transnational timber companies in Russia largely shape and influence the forest certification process. This thesis investigated the perceptions of certified and non-certified companies towards FC, and to what degree the representatives of these companies agree with the benefits and barriers of the FC process in the Russian context. The timber tracking system and the Due Diligence System (DDS) employed by each company were analyzed to investigate their effectiveness in tracking and preventing illegal timber entering the timber supply chain of the company. Moreover, non-conformities (NCs) to FSC Principles during the period 2011-2015 were collected and analyzed to reveal the degree of severity (minor and/or major) as per the FSC principles, geographical location, and size of leased forest area. The results of these interconnected studies showed that both certified and non-certified companies perceive FC as an economic initiative and as an opportunity for new markets. FC is seen to provide access to new markets and, thus, enables additional sales but also ensures legality of the timber and improves the company's image and competitiveness in foreign markets. The company's own tracking system and DDS appeared functional, but require further improvements to meet EU Timber Regulation requirements (Article II). Analyzes of the major and minor NCs in the Northwestern region and within the Russian Federation showed that the number of minor NCs have increased since 2011; from 221 to 363 incidents by 2015, which also coincides with the increase in the number of issued FSC certificates i.e. increased area under certification. The Republic of Karelia and the Arkhangelsk region had the highest recorded minor NCs, particularly for FSC Principle 6 "Environmental impactto maintain or restore the ecosystem, its biodiversity, resources and landscapes". The results further indicated that the total number of identified NCs was highest for large-size leaseholders in the Northwestern region. However, in the Russian Federation as a whole the majority of minor and major NCs occurred with small...