Why do you need this webpage?
If a forest management operation aims for FSC certification it has to justify to a certification body that it can manage its forests according to FSC’s regulations. The certification body has to ask relevant national and local stakeholders to give comments on the intended certification. Any comments have to be dealt, with consideration, by the certifier, which means they have to be answered and addressed in some way.
 But what are the options if things are going wrong and an FSC-certified forest management operation seems not to work according to the P&Cs and accredited national FSC-standards? How can stakeholders influence valid certificates and what are their rights in the FSC system? How can they check if the forest owner and the certification body who issued the FSC certificate are actually following FSC rules – the FSC principles and criteria and the different standards that apply?
And how do you, as a stakeholder, find your way through the many technical documents without loosing sight of the overall picture?
Stakeholders often have no answers to these questions and can feel isolated and no longer involved.
With this guideline we want to encourage YOU - as a stakeholder - to actively address your points in FSC certification.
How to use the guide
The following guidelines explain what kind of regulations are in place and how you can use these FSC procedures to bring your perspective into consideration on all levels of the FSC system. This paper brings together all existing aspects of stakeholder involvement and explains FSC’s dispute resolution. Although several of these processes are currently being reviewed and revised, we have tried to bring together all the necessary information to provide an overview of how the system is working at the moment. Please bear in mind that some details may be outdated when you start using this guide. We will try to update this guideline, as soon as possible, if there are major changes in the FSC system. However, it will always be the underlying and approved technical document that are the basis for any action in practical cases. In the following text you will find footnotes as references for the relevant technical documents. All documents are publicly available. |
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