Amid EUDR delay, FSC calls for swift action for deforestation-free future

"This is a major step forward in our environmental efforts to reduce CO?emissions and make us less dependent on fossil fuels," says Johan Jonsson, Head of Södra Skogsplantor. The process to changeover Södra's nursery in Flåboda to fossil-free operation commenced three years ago. The goal has now been achieved, with boilers fuelled with vegetable oils, greenhouses heated by four pellet boilers, green electricity generated by Södra's pulp mills and vehicles that run on hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO).

A Sappi-sponsored programme which helps communities adjacent to forestry plantations to become beekeepers, has shown some unexpectedly encouraging results during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Non-profit consultant and founder of the African Honey Bee programme, Guy Stubbs, who has more than 30 years’ experience in small and micro-enterprise development, was struck by the incredible resilience being demonstrated by the families that have been part of this beekeeping project. Collectively, since the beginning of the year, the participating families have harvested about five tonnes of honey, earning close to R360,000, despite the national lockdown. During a recent survey undertaken in the Sokhulu community in KwaZulu-Natal (North of Richards Bay), where the project has been running for the last couple of years and a new community in Thembalethu, Mpumalanga where training had not yet begun, Guy noticed some marked differences in people’s approach to the situation brought about by the international health crisis. “While the families in Thembalethu were watching TV and waiting for government to hand out food parcels, the 100 families that we interviewed in Sokhulu were producing and even selling vegetables, chickens, eggs and honey,” he says. All 100 families were producing honey, 85 were growing vegetables, 27 were producing eggs and 39 were producing chickens for meat,” he says.

FSC’s Global Strategy identifies “Streamlining policies and standards towards outcome orientation” and “Scaling up benefits for Indigenous Peoples, communities, smallholders and workers” as priorities. One of the ways we are achieving these goals is by updating the FSC Forest Management Group Standard, which allows groups of individual properties to be certified under a single certificate. The result is to reduce the costs and administrative barriers to FSC Forest Management certification for family forest landowners and group managers. Group managers develop and maintain rules, policies, procedures, and other essential tasks. Recently, the Forest Management Group Standard changed in several ways, with the introduction of risk-based decision making, sharing standard requirements across a group, and other efficiencies.