Dovetail Report: October 2004
Beginner's Guide to Third-Party Forest Certification: Shining a Light on the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI)
Phil Guillery

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Background

The certification of forests and forest products is the leading sector in the environmental products certification movement with nearly 450 million acres of forest certified around the world and approximately 4,500 companies marketing certified products.    The United States and Canada are leaders in the number of acres certified.   This high level of participation is due in large part to flourishing national initiatives in each county, including the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) forestry program and the American Forest and Paper Associations' (AF&PA) successful development of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), which has been adopted by the majority of major industrial landowners in the United States.  

An Introduction to SFI

The SFI operates across the United States and Canada with offices in Washington, DC. There are also local SFI Implementation Committees (SICs) to provide additional support and resources to Program Participants.   State forestry associations often sponsor SICs.   There are 38 states and 5 Canadian provinces with established SICs [1] .    One of the primary responsibilities of the SICs is implementing the training and education aspects of the SFI Standard.    According to SFI 2002 reporting, more than 75,000 loggers and forests have completed training programs [2] .

The SFI is considered by its critics to be an industry-backed response to the FSC.   When it was first formed in 1994, the SFI had no outside monitoring or independent certification process and the standards were arguably weak in comparison to certification systems already established at the time.   However, beginning with the creation of a 3rd -party verification program in 1998, the structure of the original SFI program has evolved to have much more rigorous standards and a credible independent third-party auditing system.  

As interest in forest certification has grown, the forest products industry in North America has generally divided into a number of camps: those that choose to ignore certification and wait for it to go away; those that choose to participate and certify under the FSC; and, others who feel industry could create a system that would better meet the industry's and the market's needs.    The SFI program is an example of the latter.  

The SFI program has a total of over 136 million acres enrolled, making it one of the largest sustainable forestry programs in the world [3] . Today 68 SFI program participants have completed 3 rd party certification on over 90 million acres in North America.   The SFI Program Participants, including AF&PAMember Companies and SFI Licensees are listed at the AF&PA website as well as a list of SFI Program Participants that have completed third-party certification.  

In its 2003 annual report the SFI indicates that its “program is a comprehensive system of principles, objectives and performance measures developed by professional foresters, conservationists and scientists, which combines the perpetual growing and harvesting of trees with the long-term protection of wildlife, plants, soil and water quality.” The SFI Program Principles are seen as the heart of the SFI Standard.    The SFI Objectives are intended to “translate these Principles into action by providing those who manage our forests with a specific roadmap to expand the practice of sustainable forestry and to visibly improve performance [4] ”.   The SFI program has 6 Principles, 11 Objectives, and 118 Core Indicators.  

The SFI Standard (SFIS) outlines the Performance Measures and Indicators to which participants are audited and with which participants must comply to be recognized as third-party certified and to be able to use the SFI label.   The SFI has one standard that is applied throughout the United States and Canada.


[1]www.afandpa.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Environment_and_Recycling/SFI/ SFI_Implementation_Committees/SFI_Implementation_Committees.htm
[2] www.afandpa.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Environment_and_Recycling/SFI
/Measureable_Progress/Education_and_Training1/Education_and_Training.htm
[3] http://www.aboutsfi.org/about.asp
[4] http://www.aboutsfi.org/about_principles.asp

 
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Phil holds a Master of Science degree in Forestry and a Master of Arts degree in Extension Education from the University of Minnesota, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Science Education from the University of Wisconsin.