Social and Political Dimensions of Forest Certification

Forest certification programs seek to regulate and legitimate management on a global scale. They use labels to inform consumers about the management of forests that produce the wood-based products they buy. They seek to assure consumers that the wood products were produced in an environmentally and socially acceptable manner. Certification has been spearheaded by environmental organizations as a way of improving the environmental quality, social responsibility, and economic viability of forest management. Certification programs seek to develop internationally consistent management standards as well as the organizational mechanisms to implement them. They aspire to improve governance in the forest sector by expanding stakeholder participation and increasing the public accountability of forest enterprises, reaching well beyond existing governmental frameworks in the process. It is becoming increasingly clear that the future of certification programs will depend as heavily on social and political factors as on technical and marketing consideration. This book is one of the first major contributions to understanding the social and political side of certification. Its many distinguished contributors explore important questions of equity and social justice, community and participation, policy making and governance, and eve law. They do so from a variety of perspectives, and in language readily accessible to the general reader.