Social and Political Dimensions of Forest Certification

Abstract

Forest certification programs seek to assure the buyers of wood products that the wood they are getting was produced in an environmentally and socially acceptable manner. Certification programs are growing rapidly around the world, and their rise to prominence poses many important questions. To date, most public and academic discussion of certification has focused on forest management and marketing issues, with an emphasis on technical questions. While those are important, it is becoming increasingly clear that the future of certification programs will depend on their social and political implications. This book is one of the first to examines those implications in a sustained, broad based, and academically rigorous way. It links detailed expertise on forest certification with broader theoretical and political perspectives on policy making, social justice, law, and governance.

Keywords: community forest management, ecolabeling, forest certification, forest governance, forest politics, global governance, labor standards, new governance, non-state governance, private regulation, public participation, sustainability, sustainable management, tropical forests,