Last year, the SFI Board of Directors approved the SFI Small Lands Group Certification Module and has recently begun piloting its use.
SFI Program Participants believe that forest landowners have an important stewardship responsibility and a commitment to society, and they recognize the importance of maintaining viable commercial, family forest, and conservation forest land bases. They also understand that family forest ownership is made up of large numbers of small forest holdings. The limited revenues from forest management operations on the small properties of these landowners, periodicity of their management activities and revenues, as well as a limited financial ability to demonstrate their conformity with forest management certification system requirements, represent significant barriers to forest certification. The SFI Small Lands Group Certification Module offers certification of a group of small family forest lands under one certificate.
The new module is designed for any organization certified to the SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard that has close ties to a group of small forest or woodlot owners who would like their wood to count as SFI-certified forest content. The SFI Program Participant acts as the group manager and has overall responsibility for ensuring the conformity of forest management in the certified area to the certification requirements. Participation is a voluntary commitment on the part of landowners and/or landowner agents and is established through written agreements with the group manager. This new module is limited to small forest or woodlot owners who have less than 20,000 acres in aggregate across their ownership. There are no fees charged to the landowner or SFI Program Participant, aside from any additional costs associated with achieving the standard.
Applying the new module in pilot projects will help SFI understand the potential of this approach and improve the next SFI Standard revision process.
SFI Inc. supports multiple certification tools in the marketplace and continues to value and recognize American Tree Farm System certification as certified content in both the SFI Chain-of-Custody and SFI Fiber Sourcing Standards.
For more information about the Pennsylvania Sustainable Forestry Initiative Implementation Committee, visit the website or call 888-734-9366.