Small and Low Intensity Forest Management (SLIMF)

One of the side meetings at the FSC General Assembly 200 in Cape Town considered Small and Low Intensity Forest Management (SLIMF) and showed that small scale forestry is a high priority among FSC stakeholders. Several initiatives seek to increase access to the FSC system. FSC, local actors and ProForest have developed a series of briefing notes covering the various aspects of small scale forestry under the FSC scheme. Topics include group certification, social and environmental impact assessment, and simple monitoring methods for High Conservation Values and biodiversity. The briefing notes are available at www.fsc.org/smallholders

For an owner of, for example, 10 ha of forest, harvesting only every 20-30 years and lacking any knowledge about forestry, FSC certification remains an unachievable and expensive option. However, forestry operations are often outsourced to contractors, providing the owner with an opportunity to gain access to the benefits of a FSC certification, based on contractor certification. NEPCon presented two ongoing pilot projects developing a model for combining group certification with contractor certification. More info available at www.nepcon.net.

FSC also presented an evaluation of the FSC SLIMF rules, designed five years ago with the aim of facilitating certification for small and low-intensity managed forests. The report concludes that the rules have only been used in a few cases. The key reasons why the SLIMF rules have not been more widely applied are rightly identified as the lack of adjusted forest standards, limited awareness of the rules, and lack of incentives for these operations to get certified.

The report suggests increasing the current maximum area of 1,000 ha eligible for SLIMF. This will probably result in increased use of the SLIMF system, but will not help the millions of small forest holdings with areas far below 1,000 ha. In Europe alone, half of the total forest area - almost 70 Mha - is managed by 16 million private forest owners. It does not answer the basic questions: Is the current FSC approach to forest certification feasible for small or extensively managed operations? And what are the alternatives?