‘This is a wonderful book that should be on the desk of every architect and planner. It shows how

Box 36 Certification and Labelling
Tim Cadman
Forest certification should be understood as a process that results in a written quality state
-
ment (a certificate) attesting to the origin of raw wood material and its status and/or qualifica
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tions following validation by an independent third party.
The 
criteria
are to be understood as states or aspects of forest management requiring adher-
ence to a principle of forest certification.
A 
principle
is a fundamental rule or aspect of forest management.
Indicators
are qualitative or quantitative parameters, which are assessed in relation to a 
criterion.
Standards
are a set of principles, criteria and indictors that serve as a tool to promote sustain
-
able forest management, as a basis for monitoring and reporting or as a reference for assess
-
ment of actual forest management.
Types of certification
A 
process-based
approach is designed to evaluate whether systems are in place that allow forest 
managers/owners to achieve and review targets they have set. Usually, it is the system itself, 
and not necessarily the forest, that is assessed to determine the success of the standard (eg 
the Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes – PEFC) and including a 
hybrid
with some performance requirements but predominantly systems-based (eg Australian 
Forestry Standard, a PEFC member):
• 
‘Quality assurance’ useful for markets that require forest products guaranteed to
come from legal sources.
• 
Endorsed by government; but because landowner and industry groups choose which 
other stakeholders participate, they ultimately control the PEFC.
Performance-based
management standards are designed to evaluate whether management prac-
tices in the forest itself meet specified ecological and social performance measures, and reduce 
the impacts of logging (eg Forest Stewardship Council).
• 
‘Eco-label’ useful for markets that have clients seeking products from managed forests 
that exceed government requirements.
• 
Endorsed by third parties (eg environment groups and indigenous peoples’ 
organisations).
• 
In contrast to the PEFC, the FSC has equally distributed voting powers between 
members, who are divided into three equally weighted ‘chambers’ (economic, social and 
environmental).
Certification should be seen within the context of an emerging variety of regulatory ap
-
proaches towards improving forest management, which are encouraging similar developments 
in other sectors. These are driven by NGOs and industry associations, rather than exclusively 
by government, and, although voluntary, are becoming increasingly adopted through their 
linkage to markets and governmental management systems.
Although forest certification can be seen as a governance system for regulating forest manage
-
ment, it is best understood as a system of regulatory law making, with the institutional focus 
being around developing – and certifying – standards of forest management. Forest certifica
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tion is a significant indicator of broader trends in the administrative law of global governance, 
posing the question of how political legitimacy is framed in trans-national regulation: Who is 
in charge? Is it the state, the private sector, civil society, or all three, and what does this mean 
for democratic decision-making regarding matters of environmental protection and regulation 
in an era of globalization?

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Positive Development