Forest certification and democracy

Abstract

This paper explores the possibility that forest certification represents an important emerging form of transnational democracy. Because it is largely driven and administered by nonstate actors, forest certification can be seen as suffering a democracy deficit. However, because it stresses broad participation, intensive deliberative procedures, responsiveness to state law and widely accepted norms, and competition among regulatory programs to achieve effective implementation and widespread public acceptance, forest certification appears to stand up relatively well under generally understood criteria for democratic governance. Nonetheless, a more satisfactory evaluation will require a better understanding of how responsive certification programs are to diverse, emergent constituencies as well as which certification programs win regulatory competitions, and why.

Model Forests in the Russian Federation: Local Perspectives, Challenges and Outcomes

“…Pskov model forest showed the possibility of accommodating government forest policy with international forestry standards. This is particularly important for countries where dominant forestry techniques are not in line with newer international standards and where national policy changes are slow (Meidinger, ).…”

Towards democratic and effective forest governance? The discursive legitimation of forest certification in northern Sweden

“…Such research has generally come to the conclusion that the FSC certification scheme represents a good governance model, as it grants equal voting rights to forest owners, environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) and social groups (labour organisations and indigenous peoples) (Dingwerth 2007, Chan and Pattberg 2008, Gulbrandsen 2008, Meidinger 2011. However, analysing the procedural fairness of a governance system provides only a partial aspect of the study of legitimacy since another aspect of legitimacy is how the system is perceived by the participating stakeholders.…”

Investigating social acceptability for public forest management policies as a function of social factors

“…Regarding institutional trust, several actors are involved in the management of forests, both governmental and non-governmental (Meidinger, 2011). Citizens' perceptions and participation in the context of proposed forest policies are determined by the level of trust of the entities with which they have to collaborate (Gong et al, 2010).…”