LEI has devel­oped cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem and stan­dards for nat­ural for­est, plan­ta­tion for­est, and com­mu­nity based for­est man­age­ment since 1993. Gen­er­ally there are 3 types for­est man­age­ment and man­age­ment oper­a­tors in Indone­sia :
(1) nat­ural pro­duc­tion for­est man­age­ment, man­aged by HPH;
(2) plan­ta­tion for­est man­age­ment man­aged by HTI, and
(3) com­mu­nity based for­est man­age­ment man­aged as a com­mu­nity for­est or an indige­nous peo­ple for­est
.

Based on the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the 3 for­est man­age­ment types in Indone­sia, LEI devel­ops stan­dards of Sus­tain­able For­est Man­age­ment for :

1. Sus­tain­able Pro­duc­tion Nat­ural For­est Man­age­ment Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (PHAPL),
2. Sus­tain­able Plan­ta­tion For­est Man­age­ment Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (PHTL),
3. Sus­tain­able Community-Based For­est Man­age­ment (PHBML),

For­est man­age­ment units may choose for­est man­age­ment cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dard suit­able for their for­est man­age­ment type.

LEI also devel­ops Phased Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for for­est man­age­ment units com­mit­ted to improve their per­for­mance but still hav­ing tech­ni­cal prob­lems or obsta­cles in com­ply­ing with the exist­ing standards.

There is also a Chain of Cus­tody Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion which is tar­geted for for­est prod­ucts indus­tries. For­est prod­ucts indus­tries, which have passed chain of cus­tody cer­ti­fi­ca­tion guar­an­tee that the source of the raw mate­ri­als used can be traced back to its source and it is from LEI cer­ti­fied forests.

LEI logo on tim­ber prod­ucts guar­an­tees that the whole pro­duc­tion process, from raw mate­r­ial sources to final pro­cess­ing, have met the sus­tain­able and jus­tice prin­ci­ples.

These stan­dards have been applied in the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion assess­ment for sev­eral for­est man­age­ment units and indus­tries in Suma­tra, Kali­man­tan and Java.
Out of twenty-six for­est man­age­ment units under­went the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process, dur­ing 1998–2009 period, 20 (twenty) for­est man­age­ment units have passed the assess­ment and have been granted LEI Eco-label Certificate.