Ivar Korsbakken
PEFC NORWAY
Year of incorporation 2000

Ivar says: “In Norway we actually started on setting a forest management standard before certification was introduced. The work was connected to a communication program directed towards export markets. We needed to define “best practise” in the Norwegian forest in order to communicate sustainable forestry in a credible way. All forestry stakeholders participated in the Living Forest Process, including forest owners, forest industry, labour unions and environmental organisations, among them WWF. The government was observer. In 1998 we reach a consensus agreement regarding the forest management standard and agreed that the standard could be put into all possible certification systems”.

In 1999 PEFC Norway was founded by forest owners organisations, forest industry organisations, labour unions and social groups. The Living Forest Management standard was adopted as the PEFC Norway forest management standard and the scheme was endorsed by PEFC Council in 2000.

The objectives of PEFC Norway are to promote sustainable forest management by setting up the forest and chain of custody certification system according to PEFC Council requirements, and to ensure market access through the documentation of sustainable forest management. The need for demonstrating sustainability is first of all on the export markets.

PEFC Norway has The Living Forest Management standard for SFM and a chain of custody system that is based on the PEFC Council Annex 4 requirements without special system specific standards or rules for Norway.

Through the very developed organization of small and medium sized forest holdings in Norway, 80 per cent of the market organized in forest owners’ cooperatives, and the history behind developing PEFC Norway all the commercial forest in Norway is PEFC certified. The small forest holdings not organized in associations or cooperatives sell their wood through these channels under group certification systems

The system has 9 million hectares certified forest under one individual and 10 group certificates. This is 2 million hectares more than the productive forest area in Norway due to the fact that many of the forest properties also include mountainous areas important for recreation, but without high productive forest. There are 28 chains of custody certificates, and 49 Logo Licenses.

EVOLUTION AND TRENDS

Through good cooperation between forest owners and industry all the forest area in Norway are PEFC certified. We can then hardly foresee any growth since all relevant areas is covered already. There is a large potential in chain of custody of small and middle sized forest industry and trade companies. The domestic demand for certification is however very modest since the population has tight relations to forestry and have confidence in the forest producers. The demand is on export markets and therefore the companies exporting products will be gradually be more interested in certification, also among the small and middle sized.

PEFC AND THE BIG TRADEMARKS IN Norway

The main chain of custody companies are exporting in the business to business market. The use of logos in Norway is therefore hardly visible.

More information about PEFC Norway available in http://www.pefcnorway.org