ISO 14000 is a family of standards by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) related to environmental management that exists to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations negatively affect the environment ; (b) comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other environmentally oriented requirements; and (c) continually improve in the above.
The Forest Stewardship Council GmbH (FSC) is an international non-profit, multistakeholder organization established in 1993 that promotes responsible management of the world's forests via timber certification. This organization uses a market-based approach to transnational environmental policy.
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is a non-profit organisation which aims to set standards for sustainable fishing. Fisheries that wish to demonstrate they are well-managed and sustainable compared to the MSC's standards are assessed by a team of Conformity Assessment Bodies (CABs).
Certified wood and paper products come from responsibly managed forests – as defined by a particular standard. With third-party forest certification, an independent standards setting organization (SSO) develops standards for good forest management, and independent auditing companies issue certificates to forest operations that comply with those standards.
Kleercut is the name of a former campaign conducted by Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and others towards Kimberly-Clark. It lasted from 2004 to 2009. Kimberly-Clark is the world’s largest manufacturer of tissue products, most notably the Kleenex brand. According to its annual environmental report, the company purchases over 3.1 million metric tonnes of virgin fiber from logging companies annually. The Kleercut campaign claims that this fiber is derived from wood pulp from old growth forests. Kimberly-Clark claims that the forests in question are largely cut for timber. The Kleercut campaign claims that Kimberly-Clark support the clearcutting of such forests in Canada and the United States, including forests habitat for wolverine and threatened wildlife the woodland caribou. Kimberly-Clark has responded that many of its supplies are certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative or the Canadian Standards Association.
The Rainforest Alliance is an international non-governmental organization (NGO) with staff in more than 20 countries and operations in more than 70 countries. It was founded in 1987 by Daniel Katz, an American environmental activist, who serves as the chair of the board of directors. The NGO states that its mission is “to create a more sustainable world by using social and market forces to protect nature and improve the lives of farmers and forest communities.” Its work includes the provision of an environmental certification for sustainability in agriculture. In parallel to its certification program, the Rainforest Alliance develops and implements long-term conservation and community development programs in a number of critically important tropical landscapes where commodity production threatens ecosystem health and the well-being of rural communities.
Accreditation is the independent, third-party evaluation of a conformity assessment body against recognised standards, conveying formal demonstration of its impartiality and competence to carry out specific conformity assessment tasks.
Sustainable forest management (SFM) is the management of forests according to the principles of sustainable development. Sustainable forest management has to keep the balance between three main pillars: ecological, economic and socio-cultural. The goal of sustainable forestry is to allow for a balance to be found between making use of trees and also maintaining natural patterns of disturbance and regeneration. The forestry industry mitigates climate change by boosting carbon storage in growing trees and soils and improving the sustainable supply of renewable raw materials via sustainable forest management. Successfully achieving sustainable forest management will provide integrated benefits to all, ranging from safeguarding local livelihoods to protecting biodiversity and ecosystems provided by forests, reducing rural poverty and mitigating some of the effects of climate change. Forest conservation is essential to stop climate change.
The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) is a sustainability organization operating in the U.S. and Canada that works across four pillars: standards, conservation, community, and education. SFI was founded in 1994 by the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA). SFI is the world's largest single forest certification standard by area. SFI is headquartered in Ottawa and Washington, D.C.
The Green Globe certification is an assessment of the sustainability performance of travel and tourism businesses and their suppliers. Businesses can monitor improvements and document achievements leading to certification of their sustainable operation and management.
Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited, or APRIL, is a developer of fibre plantations and the owner of one of the world's largest pulp and paper mills with operations mainly in Indonesia and China. APRIL mainly produces bleached hardwood kraft pulp and uncoated, wood-free paper, including its Paperone brand of office paper. Founded in 1993, APRIL is managed by Royal Golden Eagle and owned by Indonesian business man Sukanto Tanoto living in Singapore. Royal Golden Eagle also manages companies in paper, palm oil, construction, and energy business sectors.
A technical standard is an established norm or requirement for a repeatable technical task which is applied to a common and repeated use of rules, conditions, guidelines or characteristics for products or related processes and production methods, and related management systems practices. A technical standard includes definition of terms; classification of components; delineation of procedures; specification of dimensions, materials, performance, designs, or operations; measurement of quality and quantity in describing materials, processes, products, systems, services, or practices; test methods and sampling procedures; or descriptions of fit and measurements of size or strength.
High conservation value forest (HCVF) is a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) forest management designation used to describe those forests who meet criteria defined by the FSC Principles and Criteria of Forest Stewardship.
Kronospan is an Austrian-founded, Cyprus-based, international company that manufactures and distributes wood-based panels which are used in applications including flooring, furniture and timber-framed houses.
Sustainable products are those products that provide environmental, social and economic benefits while protecting public health and environment over their whole life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials until the final disposal.
Environmental certification is a form of environmental regulation and development where a company can voluntarily choose to comply with predefined processes or objectives set forth by the certification service. Most certification services have a logo which can be applied to products certified under their standards. This is seen as a form of corporate social responsibility allowing companies to address their obligation to minimise the harmful impacts to the environment by voluntarily following a set of externally set and measured objectives.
IFCC-KSK is the standardising and governing body for the Indonesian Forest Certification Scheme. It promotes sustainable forest management through forest certification and labeling of forest-based products that originate from certified forests. IFCC-KSK develops standards and requirements for forest certification in consensus-based, multi-stakeholder processes.
The Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe is a pan-European ministerial level voluntary political process for the promotion of sustainable management of European forests.
The Global Sustainability Assessment System (GSAS) [Originally QSAS] is the first performance-based system in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, developed for assessing and rating buildings and infrastructure for their sustainability impacts. In 2016, FIFA officially endorsed GSAS as the sustainability assessment system for Qatar's eight stadiums set to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The primary objective of GSAS is to create a sustainable built environment that minimizes ecological impact and reduces resources consumption while addressing the local needs and environmental conditions specific to the region. GSAS adopts an integrated lifecycle approach for the assessment of the built environment including design, construction and operation phases.
Criteria & Indicators of Sustainable Forest Management (C&I) are policy instruments by which sustainability of forest management in the country/region, or progress towards Sustainable forest management (SFM), may be evaluated and reported on. C&I is a conjunctive term for a set of objectives and the variables/descriptions allowing to evaluate whether the objectives are achieved or not.
