Friday, 23 October 2015
Have your say on UK forestry certification - making certification accessible for smaller woodlands
© FSC UK / J HinchEvery five years, the standard against which forest management in the UK is assessed for FSC certification, the UK Woodland Assurance Standard or UKWAS, is revised. The revision process takes into account not only FSC’s international requirements, reflected in our Principles and Criteria, but also the views of the many other stakeholders in UK forests.
Make sure you have your say on the revision of the UK Woodland Assurance Standard. The consultation paper is available here.
Making certification relevant and accessible for smaller woodlands has proved very challenging. There are ways to make certification easier for small woodland owners, for example sharing the burden of management costs by joining a group scheme, but ultimately every woodland has to meet the requirements of the standard. The current draft is intended to be size neutral, with the onus on the forest owner or manager to demonstrate to auditors that the action they have taken to meet requirements is appropriate to the scale and intensity of their woodland management.
Is it appropriate that requirements should be the same for all sizes of woodland?
Should there be different requirements for small or large forests, or is there another approach to avoid placing unreasonable burdens on small woodland owners?
Let us know what you think; check out the treatment of scale in the introduction to the draft standard, and consider how it might apply to the requirements.
Make sure your comments are heard; submit them via e-mail to ukwas@confor.org.uk.