Sustainable Forest Management Standards: Issues and Challenges for the Canadian Forest Industry (1998)

By Ramesh Chaitoo and Michael Hart

The forestry certification regime introduced by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in 1995 conforms with neither recognized international or national standards-setting procedures nor with widely accepted certification procedures. Rather, it has introduced a new and troublesome element of uncertainty into international and national efforts to inform consumers about quality and safety in the products they buy, and to instil high levels of quality, environmental responsibility, and other social preferences into forest-based production processes. Despite the vast infrastructure of municipal, provincial, and federal regulations, and processes regarding the management of forest land, an externally based, non-scientific organization has given itself the authority to decide that Canada's forests will not qualify as sustainably managed because they do not meet criteria determined in a process that excludes governments and pays scant attention to economic interests.
ISBN 1-896871-14-3. $8.00