Certified Forests

Second growth pine and mature mountain pine beetle attack, Central Interior, B.C.

Forest certification supplements the comprehensive laws that British Columbia has in place to ensure that its public forests are well managed. Credible third-party forest certification is fast becoming an important tool (and qualifier) for timber and forest products companies, governments, specifiers and buyers around the globe.

Certification provides added independent assurance that forest products are legally sourced from sustainably managed forests. Currently there are more than 50 independent forest certification standards worldwide.

Over 95% of the softwood used in North American building projects comes from the forests of North America.  In North America, the following four certification systems are recognized: 

At present, only 10% of the world’s forests are certified, and of that, Canada holds more than 40%, with British Columbia the provincial leader in forest-certification throughout the nation. As of the end of 2010, British Columbia had 53 million hectares (more than 131 million acres) of forest certified – more than 15% of Canada’s total – under the standards of one of the following internationally recognized third-party certification programs:

The CSA and SFI standards are recognized by the international Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) schemes.  

Certification programs have subtle differences but they all promote principles, criteria and objectives that are viewed as the basis of sustainable forest management around the world. All independent forest certification systems require third-party audits, annual surveillance audits, and public disclosure of findings through audit reports.

Forest certification is often augmented by chain-of-custody (CoC) certification: an accounting and tracking system that follows a forest product from its source through processing, marketing and sale to its end user.

Interactive Map of Certified Forests in B.C. From Certification Canada.
Certification of Building Materials: Important or Not? An article by Dovetail Partners.
Coast Forest Conservation InitiativeFor information on the collaborative effort of five British Columbia forest products producers committed to finding new approaches to forest conservation and management in BC's Central and North Coast.
Rainforest Solutions Project A joint initiative of Greenpeace, ForestEthics, and Sierra Club BC which promotes conservation options and economic alternatives to industrial logging on British Columbia’s Central Coast, North Coast and Haida Gwaii.