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| The Spanish Forest Certification Scheme has earned benchmark approval by PEFC International, the world's largest forest certification scheme. The decision was announced at the organisations' General Assemby at the end of October in Canberra, Australia.
The re-endorsement verifies that the Spanish scheme continues to meet PEFC International's benchmark requirements and ensures that national forest owners and chain of custody (CoC) holders benefit from the global acceptance of PEFC-certified products in green procurement policies.
PEFC Espaņa is the countries' largest forest certification scheme, with more than 1.2 million hectares of certified forests. "Spain is one of the oldest members of PEFC, so we are very glad that the independent assessment by a third-party assessor found that the scheme continues to meet our requirements", said Ben Gunneberg, PEFC Secretary General. "This is especially important as awareness of the importance of sustainable forest management is increasing in Spain, and the re-endorsement allows consumers to continue to make the responsible choice when buying wood and wood products.
PEFC International remains the only global forest certification scheme that requires its national schemes to apply for re-endorsement on a regular basis. The re-endorsement is required to ensure that latest scientific research and practical experiences from the field, but also evolving values, expectations, and aspirations of society towards sustainable forest management are systematically implemented at national, regional and local level.
Full documentation of the assessment is available at pefc.org > Members & Schemes > Spain
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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.
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