Last month we wrote about a troubling and quite public debate that has been brewing in the press and social media recently.  It concerns challenges and concerns  being raised by some Canadian timber companies (in particular, Resolute Forest Products) and involving major international ENGOs, a Quebec government minister, and the president of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).  We are writing again because this issue is important to the whole FSC community - not just those who follow the...

An interesting and rather disturbing drama has been unfolding recently, within the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC®) community in Canada.  Long-standing anxieties concerning the viability and sustainability of FSC certification in the Canadian forest have come into public view in ways that are, at the very least, awkward. We have been watching an embarrassing series of exchanges between and among the key players in forest industry, FSC International, FSC Canada, and even members of the Quebec...

Among those who are following the pending update of the FSC Chain of Custody standard (FSC-STD-40-004 v.3-0 D2), one item has risen to the top of everyone's list.  That item is called Transaction Verification. Transaction Verification exists - officially & currently - in 2 forms: 1) as clause 1.7 in the latest draft of the standard 2) as described in a 20 page Discussion Paper released by FSC-IC last month. It also exists in the extensive (and very expensive) 3-year effort by the FSC-IC...

After nearly three years of work, FSC is about to close the second discussion period on Draft 2 of the latest version of its main Chain of Custody standard (FSC-STD-40-004 v.3-0).  This latest draft was released on August 31, 2015 and MixedWood posted a brief article on it at that time.  Since then, we have examined the draft in more detail; looked over the wealth of supporting documentation; and discussed the subject with our network. We hope that you will be interested in our comments and...

After more than 2 years of hard work, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) released a first discussion draft of its version 3 update to the important Chain of Custody standard late last year. We commented on that draft several times last winter (here, here, & here) and encouraged others to do the same. Today, FSC released another version (FSC-STD-40-004 v.3-0 D2-0) for our review.  Please download a copy and look it over. We promise to examine this latest draft closely, consult with our...

If MixedWood is defined by one idea, it would be this:  Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) will always be hard.  So SFM certification programs - the tools we use to bringing SFM products to market - should not make it harder. Chain of Custody (CoC) certification is, of course, the most widely applied of our SFM certification tools.  It should be simple.  But, as we all know, it is not.  Responsibility for over-complicating CoC is shared:  PEFC, SFI, and FSC all played a role.  But FSC are...