In a ground-breaking agreement among a broad coalition of stakeholders, Great Britain adopted a national forest certification standard, the UK Woodlands Assurance Scheme. The Forestry Commission is implementing the new national standard this year, certifying its entire 800,000 hectares. The scheme is congruent with, and based on, international Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standards and all timber taken from certified UK forests will be permitted to carry the FSC label. With this move, the volume of UK timber carrying the FSC label is expected to jump from 1 percent to 75 percent of total national timber production – the highest percentage of FSC-certified timber of any country in the world.
According to Hannah Scrase, policy director for FSC in Great Britain, “Signing this document is an immense achievement. All the interested parties have worked very hard over the last 18 months to see things from one another’s point of view. Every group has had to make compromises along the way, but this has not resulted in a weak or ineffective standard.”
FSC-UK: fsc-uk@fsc-uk.demon.co.uk
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