The Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) Significance

The Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) Significance

The Forest Stewardship Council’s Significance Now More Important Than Ever.

The Forest Stewardship Council is a non-profit organization that seeks to improve forest administration all over the world.

The group is made up of diverse individuals from people who utilize timber to traders and even environmental and human rights envoys. The idea and the vision of forming such an organization arose from a unified concern about the hastening deforestation and the continuous degradation of the environment. The concerned individuals convened in 1990 and since then, more steps were taken to form the independent group. The Forest Stewardship Council Founding Assembly took place in Toronto, Canada in 1993. In 2007, the FSC came up with a Global Strategy to distinguish their top priorities. Those are: To engage more countries, forest types and forest managers to responsibly administer their forest resources; To guarantee more access to economic gains from seeking FSC certification; To safeguard integrity, credibility and transparency of the system; To put greater value on FSC certified products (like toilet paper, paper hand towels and facial tissues which are paper products relevant to our line of business); and to strengthen global network and maintain steady support for both national and international partners in order to achieve all the goals.

The FSC believes appropriate management of forests can be achieved to meet social, ecological and economic requirements of the people today without entirely damaging it for the future generations.

This is of uttermost important today as climate change is proving to be more real and imminent than it seemed years before. The Forest Stewardship Council creates incentives for forest landholder and managers to entice them into following the most suitable and responsible social and environmental applications on forest management. They also established an FSC certification, which recognizes good practice and bring forth benefits to the trader such as a premium price for certified wood and making even small forests extremely profitable. Certifications are issued for both forest management and chain of custody. In 2011 alone, the number of certificates that were given out amounted to 20,000.

The provisions that FSC established are greatly beneficial for us all. It can ultimately protect biodiversity from irresponsible and profit-driven individuals who feel no remorse in destroying the environment.

The incentives and rewards may make forestland owners rethink their management policies in order to sustain long-term benefits for themselves and the society. It will also uphold cultural importance because the right of the indigenous people will not be overlooked so are the rights of the workers. Forests provide livelihoods for more than 1.6 billion people and so protecting it will only bring more good than harm. Us, the end users will also be assured that the FSC certified products (in particular toilet paper, paper hand towels and facial tissues) we are using are of the highest quality and that they have passed the standards of the FSC. In turn, we can tell ourselves that we’ve taken part in being socially and environmentally responsible. The certification that FSC hands out raises the forestry standards in all global regions. The Forest Stewardship Council plays a significant role in leading a good example in forest management and if more individuals cooperate with their mission, the future of our environment will not seem so bleak after all.