Participate in the second public consultation of the revised Forest Management Evaluations Standard

FSC is revising the standard that provide the requirements that shall be applied by FSC-accredited certification bodies to assess conformity of forest management enterprises against forest stewardship standards. We invite interested stakeholders to participate in this consultation and provide comments to support the improvement of this standard by 16 July 2022.

FSC has launched the second public consultation of the revised FSC-STD-20-007 Forest Management Evaluations Standard open from 18 May through 16 July 2022.

What are the main changes that are being proposed in the draft standard?

This draft aims to increase the transparency and efficiency of outcome-oriented and risk-based forest management evaluations. Some changes include:
*Remote auditing: The draft introduces the conditions in which certification bodies can conduct full or partial remote audits in forest management evaluations.
*Risk based approaches: The standard also introduces requirements for risk-based evaluations and provides linkages with FSC-PRO-60-010 Incorporating a risk-based approach in National Forest Stewardship Standards to allow the risk-based approach concept to be implemented in forest management evaluations.
*Alignment with digital report template: The revised standard also provides revised evaluation reporting requirements to ensure alignment with the Forest Management Digital Audit Report Template; to be implemented in phases across all FSC Forest Management audits. The digital audit template is based on existing requirements in FSC-STD-20-007a Forest Management Evaluations Addendum-Forest Certification Reports. Once the revision of FSC-STD-20-007 is concluded, the template will be updated accordingly to reflect any changes agreed through the revision process.
more at: https://fsc.org/en/newsfeed/participate-in-the-second-public-consultation-of-the-revised-forest-management-evaluations