Worldwide, the forest industry faces sustainability challenges that have not been adequately addressed by traditional governance instruments. It is necessary to deepen understanding, from a social sciences standpoint, of the sustainability issues faced by the Chilean forest sector and how-within that context-forest certification arose and evolved. The empirical research reported in this paper sampled 11 plantation forestry and 8 native forestry businesses, and conducted semi-structured interviews of 72 forest industry and forest governance stakeholders in 2013-2014. Results indicated that large plantation forestry businesses, whilst the most economically successful, experienced the largest gaps in environmental and social sustainability-given their covered area. In contrast, native forest owners and small and medium-sized plantation forestry businesses had fewer environmental and social issues, but they were also less economically successful. Due to the perception of international markets and some key stakeholders that traditional state governance was not adequately addressing these sustainability issues, FSC certification arose as an alternative governance mechanism. FSC certification was initially strongly resisted by the large-scale plantation forestry industry, which, with the assistance of the Chilean government, developed a competing national certification scheme: CERTFOR. More recently, major plantation forestry businesses have also adopted FSC certification. It is evident from the research that regulatory changes in plantation forestry, to set clear and equitable rules for all the actors, would enhance achievement of environmental and social sustainability objectives; and that a more appropriate incentive program is necessary to encourage the sustainable management of native forests.
Forest certification was introduced to Chile twenty years ago, to promote sustainable forest management, address the degradation of natural forests, and ameliorate social issues associated with an economically-successful industrial plantation forestry industry. Adoption of certification
in Chile offers an informative case study of competition between the two international schemes, FSC and the PEFC-endorsed CERTFOR. This qualitative study explores the reasons why forestry businesses in each of the plantation and native forestry sectors sought, promoted and maintained certification
under one or both schemes. Results show that their motivations to adopt and maintain a particular certification scheme depend not only on market access or social licence to operate but also on contextual factors, including the structure of the forest industry and historical land tenure disputes.
The current situation reflects the history of certification: notwithstanding that the schemes have converged, the FSC still dominates the SFM discourse, but Chile's forestry industry has maintained CERTFOR for political reasons.
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