Polish certification system operational - seeks PEFC endorsement

The Polish PEFC certification system has been submitted to the PEFC Council for endorsement and is undergoing the international public consultation period. Savcor Indufor Oy has been appointed as external consultancy to independently assess whether the national system complies with the PEFC benchmark requirements. The public consultation period starts today and all members of the general public are invited to comment on the system and its documentation, which is available at the PEFC Council website www.pefc.org.

"After a joint two-year development process involving organisations and groups committed to sustainability, we now have a fully operational certification system for all Polish forests", said Dr Jaroslaw Oktaba, Secretary General of PEFC Polska. "Forests and the timber and paper sector play an important role in our national economy and in our trade links with other countries, so it is important for us that the Polish system has international recognition and companies can fully participate in the global trade of certified products", Dr Oktaba added.
"The application is a very special occasion for the PEFC Council, as Poland is the host country of the intergovernmental MCPFE process for sustainable forest management which PEFC uses as part of its international requirements" said Mr Ben Gunneberg, Secretary General of the PEFC Council. "We are pleased that Poland has taken this important step and I invite everyone interested in forests and certification, to review the system and send comments by the 18th September 2006 directly to the consultants, whose contact details are available on our website."

Consultants
SAVCOR INDUFOR OY
Ms Hanna Nikinmaa
T??l?nkatu 11 A
FIN-00100 Helsinki
Finland
Tel +358 684 0110
Fax. +358 9 135 2552
Email: indufor@savcor.com
http://www.savcor.com


Applicant
PEFC Polska Council
Dr Jaroslaw Oktaba
c/o Association of Foresters and Wood Technologists, UI. Czackiego 3/5
00-950 Warsawa
Poland
Tel +48 22 828 27 24
Fax +48 22 828 27 24
Email: nscl@ibles.waw.pl

PEFC Council
Mr Oliver Scholz
17, rue des Girondins
L-1626 Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Tel +352 26 25 90 59
Fax +352 26 25 92 58
Email: comms@pefc.org
http://www.pefc.org

Editor Notes

MCPFE (Ministerial Conference for the Protection of Forests in Europe)
Since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) has been a leading concept in international deliberations and work. The result today is a broad consensus on principles, guidelines, criteria and indicators for SFM on international governmental level. One such process is the Ministerial Conference for the Protection of Forests in Europe (MCPFE), an ongoing process in which thousands of experts from a very wide range of stakeholder groups have been involved. Parallel to the MCPFE process, seven other similar intergovernmental processes are currently ongoing worldwide, which can serve as a basis for the development of national forest certification systems and which the PEFC Council uses to assess national systems applying for PEFC endorsement. The eight intergovernmental processes are the:

• Montreal process
• Near East Process, Lepaterique Process,
• Regional Initiative of Dry Forests in Asia,
• International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests,
• Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Management in Dry-zone Africa,
• Tarapoto Proposal: Criteria and Indicators for the Sustainable Management of Amazonian Forests,
• African Timber Organization Principles, Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Management of Natural Forests.
• Ministerial Conference for the Protection of Forests in Europe