History of Sustainable Forest Management (SFM)

Many of the abovementioned challenges surrounding sustainability of forests and the forest management are not new or specific to wood fuels. Since the publication of the Brundtland report, Our Common Future (United Nations General Assembly 1987), the principle of sustainable development has gained general acceptance (Wiersum 1995), but principles for sustainable forestry was formulated already in German forestry literature in the 18^th century, which introduced the “Nachhaltigkeitsprinzip" (Wiersum 1995), based on the principle that yields should not exceed the increment. In 1804 the German forestry lecturer Hartig also described sustainability as follows: ‘Every wise forest director has to have evaluated the forest stands without losing time, to utilize them to the greatest possible extent, but still in a way that future generations will have at least as much benefit as the living generation’.

In the USA, the awareness of unsustainable forestry practices increased in the beginning of the 20^th century. High tax rates on forestland gave timberland owners little incentive to hold on to the lands and reforest them after logging. Rather, it was cheaper to buy timberlands, log them, and then walk away and default on the taxes. By the 1930s, in response to these practices, the former chief of the U.S. Forest Service Gifford Pinchot and other foresters demanded that the federal government take over private timberlands as the best way to assure a future timber supply (www.treefarmsystem.org).

In response to the twin threats of forest fires and government regulation of private forestlands, the American Tree Farm System was established, with the first official tree farm being established by the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company that set aside 120,000 acres near Montesano, Washington, to test their theories about fire control and reforestation (ATFS 2013).

Concern over deforestation and destruction of forests in Africa led to the creation of the African Timber Organization (ATO) in 1976. ATO is an intergovernmental organization for cooperation on forestry issues relating to its 14 member countries, which hold over 75% of the tropical natural forests on the African continent. One of the major objectives of the ATO is to promote the production and trade of African timber within the framework of sustainable forest management (ITTO 2003). A similar initiative was taken for other tropical forest and in 1983 the International Tropical Timber Agreement was opened to signature with the aim of improving forest management, wood processing and sustainable utilization, encouraging also reforestation and conservation tropical forests and their genetic resources (United Nations 1983). Out of this the collaboration International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) was formed in 1986. ITTO has 56 member governments (and the European Community), which collectively represent 90% of the world tropical timber trade and about 80% of the world’s tropical forests (ITTO 2003), and in 1992, the ITTO published the ITTO guidelines for the sustainable management of natural tropical forests, developed as a tool to monitor, assess, and report on progress in sustainable forest management for tropical forests (montrealprocess.org/The_Montreal_Process/About_Us/history.shtml).

In Europe, the First Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe was held in Strasbourg in 1990, on the initiative of France and Finland. The conference was attended by 30 European countries and the European Community as well as several intergovernmental observer organisations. Recognising the need for cross-border protection of forests in Europe, the participants agreed on six resolutions. The

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Strasbourg Resolutions focused particularly on technical and scientific co-operation in order to provide the necessary data for common measures concerning European forests (www.foresteurope.org).

In 1992, United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio again set a global focus on sustainable development, and a number of global agreements were made, including Agenda 21, the Climate Convention, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification. At this occasion also the Forest Principles were formulated as a ‘Non-Legally Binding Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of All Types of Forest’. At the time of the 1992 Earth Summit, countries had developed a series of principles for sustainable forest use, but the forest principles were the first global consensus on forests, dealing with protection of forests for environmental and cultural reasons. However, many Northern countries had hoped for a legally binding convention, but negotiations were protracted by a tension between the global North and South over access to finance and technology for the preservation of forests negotiations (Humphreys 2008).

Following the UNCED conference in Rio and the publishing of the ITTO guidelines in 1992, there was an obvious need to develop similar principles and guidelines appropriate for temperate and boreal forests.

This lead to the agreements under the Montreal Process and further development of agreements by The Ministerial Conferences on Protection of Forest in Europe (now ‘Forests Europe’). The Montréal Process Working Group (MPWG) was launched in 1994 and immediately set the task to develop a set of criteria and indicators to cover the temperate and boreal forests within its member countries. The current 12 member countries represent 33% of the world’s population, 83% of the world’s temperate and boreal forests, 49%

of the world’s forests, and 45% of the world’s wood products

(https://montrealprocess.org/The_Montreal_Process/About_Us/history.shtml).

The Earth Summit in Rio provided a forum for many non-governmental organizations to come together and gather support for a non-governmental, independent and international forest certification scheme. The idea was already put forward in 1990, when representatives from environmental and human rights a group of organizations met with a group of timber users and traders in California in 1990 to discuss concern about accelerating illegal logging, deforestation, environmental degradation and social exclusion. The failure of Governments to reach consensus in the form of an international legally binding agreement for forests caused both disillusionment and an opportunity, and NGOs such as WWF-International turned their attention to industry for a more meaningful governance-orientated resolution to the problem of deforestation. Following intensive consultations in ten countries to build support for the idea of a worldwide certification system, the FSC Founding Assembly was held in Toronto, Canada in 1993 (https://ic.fsc.org/our-history.17.htm). Today, FSC certifies forest management globally.

The FSC system was strongly influenced by environmental and human rights groups and the U.S. forest sector saw a need for developing their own system. The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) was launched in 1994 as one of the U.S. forest sector’s contributions to the vision of sustainable development established by the 1992 UNCED conference (SFI 2010). Its original principles and implementation guidelines began in 1995, and it evolved as the first SFI national standard backed by third-party audits in 1998.

After these first intergovernmental processes and forest management certification systems had been established, a cascade of other systems followed in other parts of the world. Today there are nine intergovernmental processes on sustainable forest management (Figure 45),

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http://www.fao.org/forestry/ci/16834@45449/en/), even if the Montreal process and Forests Europe remains the most active processes, with national and regional level reporting taking place on criteria and indicators (C&I) of these frameworks. There is much agreement in the literature on the importance of C&I in, for example, Latin America for increasing the awareness of sustainable forest management and getting the principles into forestry legislation and having them implemented in the field. (Günter, Louman et al.

2012). This has also been the case in Europe (FOREST EUROPE, UNECE et al. 2011).

Figure 45. Countries involved in the nine international processes for Sustainable Forest Management (Wilkie, Holmgren et al. 2003). Several countries are members of more than one process, e.g. Russia, which is a member of both the Montreal process and FOREST EUROPE.

Voluntary certification also took a step forward in 1999, when representatives from the forest sector in Europe established the Pan-European Forest Certification Council (PEFC). Later, as the programme expanded its scope outside Europe, it changed its name to “Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes”. PEFC act as an umbrella system that endorses national forest certification schemes (www.pefc.org). Today, about 30 countries have national schemes endorsed by PEFC, including ATFS and SFI in the USA, and more schemes are being added almost every year. FSC and PEFC are now the dominating forest certification systems globally, with one third of the world’s certified forest being certified under FSC, and two third being certified under a PEFC system. About 8% of the world’s forests are certified today (Stupak, Lattimore et al. 2011).

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Figure 46. The share of certified forest area by country. The map probably overestimates the amount of certified area somewhat, as a part of the forest area is double certified. In Indonesia, part of the land may also be certified according to the LEI system. Note also that in a country like Canada, there are very large areas of unmanaged forest, for which forest certification is not (yet) relevant. (GRID-Arendal 2013), http://www.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/very-little-forest-area-is-certified_bd83. Credited Philippe

Rekacewicz assisted by Cecile Marin, Agnes Stienne, Guilio Frigieri, Riccardo Pravettoni, Laura Margueritte and Marion Lecoquierre.

In May 2007, the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) adopted the Non-legally Binding Instrument on All Types of Forests (NLBI) (FAO 2011). The instrument is considered a milestone, as it is the first time Member States have agreed to an international instrument for sustainable forest management. The instrument is expected to have a major impact on international cooperation and national action to reduce deforestation, prevent forest degradation, promote sustainable livelihoods and reduce poverty for all forest-dependent people.