For Peter Street, certification of the Nipissing sustained forest license area does mean a little extra work.
“It certainly has added to our planning requirements in meeting the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) requirements,” says the Nipissing Forest Resource Management general manager of the FSC certification that went on the forest earlier this year, the third of its kind in Ontario. “We haven’t seen much benefit yet, but we hope to.
“It takes a little while to establish markets and to notify the building suppliers that we do have certified wood available and have all the chains of custody in place to follow through on the complete system,” he says. “It’s something we have to keep working on.”
Bruce White, vice-president of merchandising and marketing of lumber and building materials for Home Hardware in Ontario, says most consumers are not aware of many of the issues surrounding forest certification, but it is something that companies that sell the wood look at.
“We realize the ramifications around endangered forests and what certified really means,” he says. “I don’t think the average consumer realizes that.”
More certified wood is making its way into the market, however, as more lumber-producing companies adopt certification, says White.
“The biggest challenge is on imported and endangered species,” he says. “We don’t deal with a lot of that but mahogany used to be one the real key ones. Those are more the issue, in my estimation, than what’s sitting here in Canada.”
FSC is one of several certification systems in operation and forest companies are increasingly being encouraged to adopt them. Under such systems, a company is independently audited on its management process to ensure that forests are sustainably managed for the long-term health of the forest and protection of the environment.
The idea behind the certification is that consumers who purchase products such as lumber or other wood products can see the label and know that it comes from a sustainably managed forest.
Street says FSC was selected in part because of its regard internationally and because it is being accepted as an industry standard. It also has more of a “buy-in” by environmental groups. There are higher standards of inclusion of First Nations’ concerns into management planning, as well as more local involvement such as purchasing and providing employment opportunities.
“We worked for about a year to document that we meet all of these standards,” he says. “We hired Scientific Certification Systems from California, one of the three certification bodies in the world, to come in and look at our systems.”
He says the Nipissing forest met many of the conditions that were laid out under the certification requirements.
“There’s more that we can do. We’re not perfect by any means,” says Street. “We certainly met the bulk of the requirements.”
Among requirements include building business-to-business relationships with the local First Nations communities and to go “above and beyond” current planning requirements, he says. There are also requirements for the preservation of certain habitats.
“The Nipissing forest is on the northern edge of the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence region and there are a number of plants and animals that are threatened and endangered because of activities in southern Ontario,” he says. “They may not live on the Nipissing forest, but we are their last resort so we have to preserve that habitat for the critters.
“There’s a real balancing act between providing economic benefit, social benefits, wildlife habitats and so on,” he says. “It’s a much more holistic look at the forest itself.”
