Decision on the Review of the FSC Principles and Criteria
FSC Principles and Criteria for Forest Stewardship (FSC-STD-01-001), an internationally recognized standard, sets out global requirements for responsible forest management. The Principles & Criteria (P&C) have been amended several times since their original publication in 1994. Their latest version 5-2 was approved in 2015.
FSC normative documents are regularly reviewed and, if needed, revised. To ensure that the P&C is up to date, a review has been done in 2019.
FSC developed a draft review report and submitted it for public consultation from 15 January until 6 March 2019 via the FSC consultation platform. Most of the consultation participants supported the recommendations from the review report not to initiate a revision process of the P&C at this stage. The review report also proposed to conduct the next regular review of the P&C in five years. This decision will give FSC enough time to gain field experience once the transition of the National Forest Stewardship Standards to the new P&C has been completed.
In June 2019, the FSC Policy and Standards Committee recommended the approval of the report conclusions and proposal to the FSC Board of Directors.
Click here to access the timeline of the P&C review process and to download the P&C V5-2 and the review report.
