FSC and LEI announce col­lab­o­ra­tion to advance respon­si­ble for­est man­age­ment in Indonesia

BONN, Ger­many (31 May 2010) — The For­est Stew­ard­ship Coun­cil (FSC) and the Lem­baga Eko­la­bel Indone­sia (LEI) have announced the launch of an 18-month col­lab­o­ra­tion to explore poten­tial areas of coop­er­a­tion regard­ing respon­si­ble for­est man­age­ment and for­est cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Indone­sia. The agree­ment marks an impor­tant mea­sure in the global efforts to facil­i­tate respon­si­ble for­est man­age­ment in the trop­ics, and builds upon pre­vi­ous col­lab­o­ra­tive ini­tia­tives to advance for­est cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Indonesia.

As bio­di­ver­sity hotspots of the world, trop­i­cal forests are vital to the exis­tence of mil­lions of indige­nous peo­ple, and pos­sess a unique set of social and envi­ron­men­tal attrib­utes. The rain­forests of Indone­sia rank among the most exten­sive and bio­log­i­cally sig­nif­i­cant in the world. How­ever, these forests are under tremen­dous pres­sure. Defor­esta­tion from ille­gal log­ging and for­est con­ver­sion con­tin­ues to threaten vital habi­tat and crit­i­cally endan­gered species such as the Suma­tran orang-utan.

For­est man­age­ment cer­ti­fi­ca­tion can offer finan­cially com­pet­i­tive alter­na­tives to poor for­est man­age­ment prac­tices, ille­gal log­ging and land con­ver­sion. FSC and LEI use cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to address cru­cial social and envi­ron­men­tal forestry issues — FSC inter­na­tion­ally and LEI spe­cific to Indone­sia. The coop­er­a­tion between the two cer­ti­fi­ca­tion schemes has the poten­tial to ben­e­fit from the locally rel­e­vant stan­dards and processes led by LEI in Indone­sia with the inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized FSC standards.

LEI has a bal­anced multi-stakeholder gov­er­nance struc­ture sim­i­lar to that of FSC and LEI has been instru­men­tal in estab­lish­ing an applic­a­ble sys­tem for improv­ing for­est man­age­ment in Indone­sia, said FSC Direc­tor Gen­eral Andre de Fre­itas. With the shared goal to improve for­est man­age­ment in the trop­ics, we can fur­ther this work by iden­ti­fy­ing the syn­er­gies between the FSC and LEI cer­ti­fi­ca­tion schemes and build­ing on our respec­tive strengths.

This is a new phase of FSC and LEI col­lab­o­ra­tion in Indone­sia which shows sig­nif­i­cant advance­ment since the Joint Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Pro­gram that con­cluded in 2005. Through many con­struc­tive dis­cus­sions and meet­ings, FSC and LEI have agreed to sign a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing which intends to set up a new col­lab­o­ra­tion express­ing shared vision of both par­ties which demon­strate mutual respect on each other cer­ti­fi­ca­tion scheme and achieve­ments, said LEI Exec­u­tive Direc­tor F. Agung Prase­tyo.   The FSC and LEI are both cer­ti­fi­ca­tion schemes that pro­mote respon­si­ble for­est man­age­ment. There would be so much we could achieve by work­ing together and thus hope­fully bring sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit to those who use the FSC and LEI cer­ti­fi­ca­tion schemes.

FSC and LEI have iden­ti­fied six spe­cific areas for col­lab­o­ra­tion which will be explored in the com­ing months. These will include sev­eral analy­sis of com­pat­i­bil­ity between for­est man­age­ment stan­dards and other cen­tral com­po­nents of the respec­tive schemes, and a par­tic­u­lar focus on infor­ma­tion exchange on cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of com­mu­nity based for­est operations.

About FSC: FSC is an inde­pen­dent, non-governmental, not for profit orga­ni­za­tion estab­lished to pro­mote the respon­si­ble man­age­ment of the worlds forests. It pro­vides stan­dard set­ting, trade­mark assur­ance and accred­i­ta­tion ser­vices to com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions inter­ested in respon­si­ble forestry. Prod­ucts car­ry­ing the FSC label are inde­pen­dently cer­ti­fied to assure con­sumers that they come from forests that are man­aged to meet the social, eco­nomic and eco­log­i­cal needs of present and future gen­er­a­tions. FSC rules and pro­ce­dures are devel­oped through strong multi-stakeholder processes. They are sup­ported and endorsed by social, envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nomic con­stituents in the Global South and Global North alike. Find more infor­ma­tion at www.fsc.org.

About LEI: The Indone­sian Eco­la­belling Insti­tute (LEI-Lembaga Eko­la­bel Indone­sia) is a non-profit bal­anced mem­ber­ship based orga­ni­za­tion that devel­ops for­est cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems that pro­mote mis­sion of just and sus­tain­able for­est resource man­age­ment in Indone­sia. LEI has a very broad sup­port in Indone­sia among the for­est indus­try, indige­nous peo­ples groups, the for­est sci­ence com­mu­nity as well as social and envi­ron­men­tal non-governmental orga­ni­za­tions. As a bal­anced mem­ber­ship based orga­ni­za­tion LEI retains inde­pen­dence and trans­parency, both nec­es­sary for the cred­i­bil­ity of for­est cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Find more infor­ma­tion at www.lei.or.id.

Media Con­tacts:

The com­plete release avail­able to down­load here
Mou beetwen LEI and FSC avail­able to down­load here