PEFC renews commitment to transparency and independence, publishes guidelines for Panel of Experts

The PEFC Council has today published guidelines for the "Involvement of the Panel of Experts in the Endorsement of National Forest Certification Schemes". These guidelines further strengthen the transparency and robustness of the world's largest forest certification scheme and formalize the role of the peer-review process, which has been mandatory since October 2006.

PEFC requires an independent third-party evaluation of national certification schemes before it endorses or re-endorses a scheme. This evaluation verifies that PEFC certification is applied at the same high level in all countries with PEFC endorsed certification systems.

In order to guarantee equal quality of evaluation reports globally, any such evaluation is subject to a peer review by a Panel of Experts, which assesses and provides comment on the quality and robustness of the independent evaluation. Experts from a broad range of interests, including forestry, certification and accreditation processes, NGOs (including social and environmental interests), and market access, examine the evaluation reports.

"Peer review by a Panel of Experts is an important feature of PEFC certification, adding an extra safeguard on top of third-party evaluation", said Ben Gunneberg, Secretary General of PEFC. "These guidelines ensure that the peer review process is transparent and independent, with the same scrutiny applied to any national forest certification system."

The Panel of Experts review, including the names of the experts, is included in the evaluation reports and publicly available at www.pefc.org.

Contact

• Mr Ben Gunneberg, Secretary General PEFC Council, Tel: +41 (22) 799 45 4

• Guidelines for the Involvement of the Panel of Experts in the Endorsement of National Forest Certification Schemes (GL 8/2008)
• CV's: Panel of Experts
• Complete technical documentation

Editor Notes

PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes)
PEFC is a framework for the assessment and endorsement of national forest certification systems that have been developed based on internationally recognised requirements for sustainable forest management. Since its launch in 1999, PEFC has become the largest forest certification umbrella organisation covering national systems from all over the world, delivering hundreds of millions of tonnes of wood to the processing industry and then onto the market place from currently more than 200 million hectares of certified forests. This is an area which is larger than the combined forest area of all European Union member states. PEFC has strong grass roots support from many stakeholders including the forestry sector, governments, trade associations, trade unions and non-governmental organisations.

Forest Certification
Forest certification is a process which provides an assurance to purchasers of wood and paper products that the wood used in the products comes from sustainably managed forest. It involves the certification of forests (Sustainable Forest Management certification) and the certification of the wood flow via processing, manufacturing and trading enterprises (Chain of Custody certification) to the final consumer