Authors: Marijke van Kuijk, Francis E. Putz and Roderick Zagt
Date: December, 2009
Forest certification is widely seen as an important component of strategies for conserving the world’s forests. During the 1990s concern about the loss of biodiversity in logged forests was a key driver behind the emergence of forest certification. It was thought that by adhering to strict standards, production forests could help protecting biodiversity. Forest certification was introduced more than 15 years ago and since then more than 300 million hectares of forests have been certified under a variety of schemes. But does it work?

Tropenbos International (TBI) now presents the results of a literature study evaluating the effects of forest certification on the biodiversity of temperate, boreal, and tropical forests. This publication addresses the effects of forest certification on biodiversity by discussing what biodiversity is, how it is measured, what sustainable forest management is, and by analyzing the available scientific literature on the effects of forest management activities and certification on biodiversity.

The study confirms that good forest management practices associated with forest certification appear to benefit biodiversity in managed forest. Reduced-impact logging, the protection of streamside reserves and biodiversity reserves, and the retention of green trees in clear cuts all help to keep more species than conventionally management methods. Yet, the literature reviewed in this study shows that direct and quantitative evidence about these effects on biodiversity is not conclusive, and the long term effects of certification remain uncertain. Few, if any, systematic studies of the effects of forest certification have been conducted. Certification agencies, forest managers and the research community have not yet implemented sound approaches to monitor certification effects on biodiversity. In the long term, this may undermine the credibility of certification as a tool to conserve biodiversity.

The authors recommend scientists to focus on providing quantitative, field-based evidence of species responses to forest management practices. This information will help defining acceptable trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and the social and economic interests of forest management, and will provide a sound basis for assessing the effectiveness of forest management practices commonly associated with certification.

The literature study was commissioned by the The Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving (PBL, or Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency).

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