Forest certification in Russia: development, current state and problems

Abstract

The article analyzes the development of voluntary forest certification by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) system in Russia. The article is based on the review of diverse information sources, analysis of the reports of timber processing enterprises, personal observations during certification audits, discussions in workgroups, and information collected at training courses. We evaluated the present state of voluntary forest certification in Russia, analyzed non-compliances of the activity of Russian wood processing enterprises with the national standard FSC-STD-RUS-V6-1-2012 and indicated possible reasons for non-fulfillment of the requirements. We also presented problems in the development of forest certification in Russia and possible ways for its further development. By the end of 2015, about 40 million hectares were certified, approximately 160 certificates were issued on forest management and 440 certificates on chain of custody. The 6th principle of the national forest management standard is the most problematic for logging enterprises. The principle concerns the requirements on the evaluation of impact of enterprise's activity on the environment. About 40% of non-compliances identified by auditors referred to the indicators of the 6 th principle. We argue that the main problems of forest certification development in Russia are contradictions between the principles and the criteria of FSC and the requirements of Russian forest legislation, retention of biodiversity and high conservation value forests, lack of economic incentives for introduction and implementation of certification requirements, and high cost of audits. Despite the existing problems, the certification remains one of the most important instruments for achieving sustainable forest management in Russia.

An Analysis of the Non-conformities of Certified Companies Operating in Northwestern Russia

“…It is worth mentioning that an earlier published research article related to development of forest certification in Russia also concluded that the majority of NCs were issues with Principle 6 [50]. This is again in line with the findings of this study.…”

“…There are numerous publications related to forest certification on a global scale during the last two decades when the certification process started to develop actively in many parts of the world [2,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41], including research in Russia [6,17,20,21,31,42,43]. However, only a few studies from different parts of the world have attempted to analyse the performance level related to forest management based on issued NCs [48][49][50][51][52]. At the same, there is a general need for further research related to the performance of certified companies and NCs issued by different CBs in other federal regions of Russia and comprehensive comparison among the federal districts within the country.…”

A certificação FSC em publicações científicas internacionais disponíveis na Science Direct e Scopus

“…Entre os principais benefícios da certificação FSC encontrados nos artigos selecionados, destacam-se: conservação da biodiversidade incluindo a vida selvagem; redução no desmatamento florestal e também da poluição atmosférica; recuperação de áreas degradadas; melhorias nas condições de trabalho e respeito a legislações trabalhistas; melhorias na relação com a comunidade local, incluindo povos indígenas; preservação de aspectos culturais da comunidade local; geração de emprego e renda; e fortalecimento da marca organizacional (Gullison, 2003;Hain & Ahas, 2011;Moore et al, 2012;Kulyasova, 2013;Miteva et al, 2015;Lukashevich et al, 2016;Paluš et al, 2017Paluš et al, , 2018Sugiura & Oki, 2018;Tricallotis et al, 2018;Malovrh et al, 2019;Campos-Cerqueira et al, 2020).…”

Perception of Brazilian Companies on the Potential and Concrete Benefits Resulting from the FSC Certification

“…Some FSC barriers are pointed out by [3,24]: high investment value; high costs; bureaucracy; difficulty in adapting legislation; complexity inherent in the interpretation of principles, criteria and indicators; lack of strategies for the conservation of rare and/or endangered species; absence of environmental education programs and care for workers' health and safety [25]. Additionally, the literature also mentions as barriers to FSC certification, the low demand in the Brazilian market; consumer's unawareness of certification; absence of premium price and government incentive, and the lack of evidence on the reduction in deforestation or emissions of greenhouse gases [2,8,[25][26][27][28]. According to [24], taking into consideration all those challenges, it should not be assumed that certified plantations are always the most sustainable ones.…”